


In Name Only

by AwesomeJon



Category: Parahumans Series - Wildbow
Genre: Alternate Universe, Author Is Sleep Deprived, Bipolar Disorder, Brute Dinah I don't know what else to even say if that doesn't help nothing will, Editing tags sleep deprived lmao, Fanfiction of Fanfiction, Film Noir, Gen, Metafiction, Surreal, The Author Regrets Nothing
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-04
Updated: 2020-05-18
Packaged: 2021-02-28 00:14:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 13
Words: 26,256
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22564585
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AwesomeJon/pseuds/AwesomeJon
Summary: Three characters in search of an author -- one from a story you've all heard of, two others from outlandishly divergent fanfics of that story some guy wrote. Oh, and Lisa. NOT a post-GM fic. That never happened, it's fictional.
Comments: 10
Kudos: 16





	1. In Medias Res

When I was a kid, my best friend and I used to pretend we were superheroes. We made up stories, filled three ring binders with the adventures of Skitter and Flashdance (she was perky, I was goth), There were many supporting characters -- a global Protectorate full of adults who knew what was going on, could make things better. There were no moral conflicts -- the Golden Man, an alien of incredible power, was on their side. He always helped the heroes save the day, and despite Skitter’s creepy bug powers she was always good.

When I was twelve, I went away to summer camp, and came back to find that friend had decided she hated me. Things escalated, and her new friends shoved me in a locker. With stuff, designed to attract bugs. Gross stuff. Used tampons, toilet paper, moldy food, the works. It worked. Surrounded by bugs, and yet entirely unlike Skitter, my mind  _ broke _ \-- sent me sailing into next week, unmoored from any anchor. 

I spent two years in group homes and mental institutions, slowly rebuilding my anchor. The old stories became my world -- the writing flowed. The authority figures became scum, the Golden Man a world-ending vengeful god. Skitter got her powers from a “Trigger Event”, a traumatic sort of thing that causes an extradimensional parasite to latch onto your brain. Mine’s called bipolar II, the doctors said. Manageable, they said.    
  
I wrote my way through. I  _ lived _ in this world, mentally. Just moved into it. Left brain and body behind. There was now a secret organization, which had some degree of control over the world and what happened to it, which made the choices I was having to make day by day. Lose here to win there? Or lose there to lose twice? Their leader looked like my dead mother. It was...very psychological. Very purgative. Very autobiographical. I  _ dreamed _ in this shit, day in and night further in. When I was sixteen we moved to Chicago, right after I got out of the last group home. The stories changed, maybe not for the better, but I kept writing. My first boyfriend was a knife wielding greaser from the wrong side of the tracks -- he was  _ not _ good for me, is all I’ll say. I aborted our daughter, which I still regret. Got arrested. Possession, aggravated assault, a bunch of shit. Long story, but “he made me do it and besides I wanted to” is enough, I think, for now. I wrote one last story, in which the Golden Man exacted my juvenile rage at the course my life had taken on  _ the world itself _ \-- just blew the whole thing up. Was totally bonkers. I dedicated it to Aster Anne, and put it in a shoebox under my bed, with all the other broken dreams and brainchildren.

Adulthood came. The stories stopped. Dad dropped me off at college, after a tense argument about what my mother would have wanted. Well, Mom met Dad at a punk show. He grew up, she didn’t. I dropped out three weeks later. 

Which brings me to the shit that’s happening lately. I’m back in Brockton Bay, in an upstairs apartment I picked up for five hundred a month. Drinking the rest of my money away. I still write, occasionally. Mostly angry forum rants. My arm got wrecked in a car accident a few years ago, almost went like mom -- only nerve damage, luckily. Almost lost it.

Oh. Did I mention the accident? Happened right before dad dropped me off at college. Busted my head up something fierce, too. They say it’s a traumatic brain injury. Everything feels...grey. Dark. Unreal. They say that fades. I just keep thinking, one, I should be dead, two, the paramedic looked like Mom.

You’re probably thinking “my God, Taylor, you sound like a wreck!” And believe me, you have no idea. At all. But things are looking up. You see, I was at the bar the other night, and this girl...well, let me tell you about it.  _ This girl _ .

I walked in at around seven, right. Enough time for some drinking, maybe get laid. Long day, needed a longer weekend. I walked up to the bar, sat down. Ordered my usual Jameson’s. A double. Then  _ the girl _ arrives. “Hey you,” she says, grinning cattily. I love these types, always thinking they can get me in bed with them. So I’ve already got her in the mental “fuck you” box, and I pull out my phone. Start flicking through it. 

She puts her hand in front of my face! The  _ audacity _ . But it’s earned her my attention. “What,” I say, turning to look at her. Dirty blond hair, pulled back. Freckles. Actually quite pretty green eyes. 

“You don’t remember me?”

I roll my eyes. “Lady, if I swung that way, you’d be able to score without a line like  _ that _ .”

She shakes her head. “Guess you don’t. Name’s Lisa.”

“You remember me, though.” I take a long pull from my whiskey. “So you don’t need my name.”

“That’s right, Taylor, I don’t.” I spit the long pull back out all over the table.

“What the fuck.”

“I remember you.” Lisa smiles. “And you...don’t? Really, after all the fun we had?”

“You’re annoying, I’m not a lesbian, what kind of fun do you think we had, exactly? I’m kinda wondering if I blacked out and beat you up. Would explain a lot.”

Lisa laughs. “Nah. Well, listen. I’ve got to join ‘the gang’” -- she actually spoke the air quotes, through some evil magic -- “so I’ll let you stew. Think it over. When you remember, gimme a call, okay?”

She slides a business card across the table. I pick it up and look at it -- “In Name Only Consulting” and a phone number. I look up to say something insulting and probably poorly thought out, but she’s gone.

Something isn’t sitting well with me about it. She does ring a bell, but I don’t know from where. Depakote will fuck your brain, maybe I know her from the group homes? Well, now I’m in a sour fucking mood. I’ll figure it out at home. Ain’t getting laid tonight.

When I get home, I pull up the Creative Writing forums, looking to either read someone else’s work and escape for a while or rail at the internet and its shitty ideas. Monkeys and typewriters, an entire planet’s worth. Always good for something, usually cheap laughs. Someone once told me “Taylor, you’re so good at writing assholes!” Well, duh.  _ Write what you know _ . 

But the newest story is one I haven’t seen before. And it’s blowing up. It’s called “Copacetic”, and it’s fanfic of some book I’ve never read. Mentally formulating my single line comment that will earn me a drunken threadban --  _ moar liek so pathetic lol _ \-- damn, I’m witty on the sauce! -- I click on the thread. And nearly shit myself.

If this is being posted to where I think it’s being posted to, I won’t need to bore you with why. In case it isn’t, I’ll explain briefly. The main character of Copacetic is a college age Taylor Hebert. The supervillain formerly known as Skitter. Yeah. The most unbelievable part?  _ Things are going well for me _ . Yeah, as if.

I’m not even sure what to do about this. Report it? For what? PM this Cloud-Buster guy? Nah, too creepy. “No,  _ you _ have an unhealthy fixation on  _ me _ .” Post in the thread? To what end? What could I possibly say? “Haha relatable,  _ except not _ ”?

Luckily there’s a PM from one AllSeeingEye. I open it. I’m mentally setting up to take it out on them, but

_ Starting to remember now? _

I sigh and roll my eyes. This  _ bitch _ .  **Just tell me.**

_ No. Can’t. First of all, it’s not what it obviously will seem like when you know more, second, where’s the fun in that? _

**It’s more fun than getting my fist shoved up your ass.**

_ I thought you didn’t swing that way. ;-p _

**God dammit.**

I log off and go to bed. Asleep, I dream. There’s a gun, and a baby, and regrets, and the endless grayness of a fever dream sleep -- and at the end of the tunnel, backed into a wall, there’s my boyfriend using the name I almost killed him over. “What better option for the make-believe queen?”

The nightmare echoes. Tortures me, in slavish loops. I hate this kind of dream. Mania is coming, and it’s gonna be a  _ bitch _ , I can tell. 

I wake up, and before I even put my pants on I’m pouring myself a double. Something about all this has come together. And I’m kneeling down, opening the box under the bed, where is it, where is it.

There. Colored pencil on 8.5x11 printer paper, done sometime in February 2011. Lisa. “Tattletale”. Low level street criminal. Wasting her talent. Custom built for the express purpose of pissing me off, but she was much more fun when she was merely fictional. Although if I imagined her...what? Nothing makes sense about that. She’s got to be based on someone I met once. Or something.

Whipping out my cell phone, I call In Name Only Consulting. “The number you have dialed is --” typical. I thumb it off and fume for a few minutes, then head back to the computer, fuming some more.

Copacetic is gone. AllSeeingEye is gone. Not banned,  _ gone _ . Never existed in the first place, if the forum software is any indication. I’m drunk as a skunk, it’s nine in the morning, and I’m either neck deep in mania or something is up. And when I find my pants, I’m gonna figure out which.

All right. Let’s see. When I’ve been like this before, there’s something I’m trying to  _ tell _ myself. But I usually don’t hallucinate. I’ve never done that before, actually. Ever. So there’s something I’m missing. Did the manic episode predate meeting “Lisa”? Did I base her on someone from the group home? Did meeting her trigger it? Am I not manic at all? Nope. Last option is stupid. Definitely manic, racing thoughts. Running fingers through my hair.

_ Bugs thrumming around me, a dull roar as I turn my gaze to the exit, where _

A doorbell. FUCK. My paranoia says it’s always the cops.

_ Armsmaster looks back. “Come quietly, and there’s still a chance.” _

I open the door. No one’s there. There’s a package, though. No return address. A note tucked into the top.

_ “You said you wanted to be a hero, right?”  _

_ Skitter looks at him, shakes her head. “No. That was someone else.” _

I read the note over several times, in disbelief.  _ Two others like you, one you want to meet, one you  _ **_reaaaalllly_ ** _ don’t. Not again, anyway. Support group meets Wednesdays at Somer’s Rock and Grill, private meeting room in the back. Oh. Once I told you guys “the stories we tell ourselves are not who we are,” but...they should be. Ttfn. _

Grumbling and fuming, I open the package. It’s a domino mask. One side white, the other black. What the fuck is this shit? What’s going on?

Of course I’m an idiot, easily duped into dumb and bad ideas. So I’m there with bells on. There’s just four empty chairs, a whiteboard and projector, and a girl, standing on the far wall. Looks to be about eighteen. Dark, short hair. Sunken eyes. Sad face. It’s the face of someone who’s been a junkie, kicked it, still thinks they're a junkie. I know, I’ve seen it. Always on other people, don’t worry. My only pills are happy ones!

I assume she’s here for whatever cult or timeshare or utterly bad idea Lisa is about to sell us on. Wait, “and” utterly bad idea. Why would joining Lisa’s cult be anything but? Anyhow, we just have to wait for Lisa, and -- oh, here’s the door now. That’ll be...no. It’s not. Worse than that, it’s...it can’t be. I haven’t seen her since we left the Bay the first time! I’m melting down mentally, I want to scream, I don’t feel like I can breathe. No. Nothing is real now, nothing can be real. No. nonononono

“Cat got your tongue, Hebert? It’s been a while.” The figure from my actually existing not fictional nightmares lopes across the room, hooking a chair with her leg and sitting on it, backwards. Leaning against the back of it and looking up at me smugly. She hasn’t changed a  _ bit _ .

My voice finally finds me. “Sophia Hess. What the  _ fuck _ are you doing here?”

  
She grins. “I dunno. Lisa said she’d explain, but now I’m wondering if you cooked this up?”

“Cooked  _ what _ up?!”

The other girl has been watching us, and seems afraid to interrupt, but has finally made her way over. “I think there’s a small chance that my explaining why  _ I  _ am here would help. I’m Dinah Alcott, and I remember both of you. But I’m not sure from where.”

Sophia and I both swivel our heads like hungry hawks, locking eyes on Dinah. “Explain,” I say. Sophia nods.

“I...died. I was much younger. At the end of the...the story? I guess? I died. But the three of us traveled together, in this dream, or something. I don’t know. Haven’t given it much thought since I was about twelve.”

“Twelve,” I say absently.

“All three of us? Hebert and I?” Sophia scoffs. “I don’t buy it.”

Dinah laughs. “Well, the two of you didn’t exactly have much choice. Look on the bright side -- we killed the devil together.”

“The devil.” I can’t believe I’m allied with Sophia here. But this kid sucks. “Really.”

“Yep. Well, it wasn’t...strictly the devil? It was a space alien. In a black hole, in the New Mexican desert.”

Sophia rolls her eyes. “This sounds retarded.”

Dinah laughs. “You’re just acting. You haven’t told her  _ your _ story.”

“Because I’m not sure it’s not just a fucked up sex dream.”

I raise an eyebrow. “Projection, really? After so long?”

Sophia smirks. “You wish.”

  
That’s when Lisa comes in the side door, whistling to herself. “Oh, hey, I see you guys started without me. Cool, cool. No one’s wearing masks, still? Damn. I thought they were a cool idea.”

She actually seems to notice me, and sits down in a chair facing us to address me directly. “I thought it would give me some idea of what you saw yourself as, which side you picked to put forward.”

“Depth psychology, exercises, it’s a cult.” I nod knowingly. “Called it.”

Lisa snorts. “If only. Sophia, you’re not up to sharing with Taylor?”

I can’t believe I’m covering for her. I guess I’ve grown up, gotten over it, developed a scab? “There’s...history between us. A lot of it.”

Dinah nodded. “I knew that before I met either of you.”  _ God damn it _ . 

“And you? You what, you were a precocious twelve year old, you died, now you’re fucking stuck that way?” I glare at her.

Her head lowers, she speaks more softly. “I’m sorry. I was just trying to help.”

Lisa chuckles. “I saw this coming. You should have seen how they each reacted when I mentioned you.”

“What the fuck.” My head is spinning, this is stupid. 

Sophia smirks at me, tauntingly. “I cut your eye out.”

“What.”

“Well, you asked me to, and I didn’t know what else to do! So we were doing this weird lesbian thing, then you decided to just end the world, on some stupid whim. And Dinah got caught up in it. It was  _ real _ weird but I always figured you’d be better adjusted in real life? That’s true, right?” She gawks at me, mockingly. “Please tell me you’re not that crazy for real. I know you got fucked up bad, but like…”

“The fuck.” I fold my arms and look at Lisa. “If you don’t make this  _ quick _ on one hand and  _ good _ on the other I’m fucking leaving.”

Lisa looks at me, expressionless. “What do you want me to say?”

“What is this? The cult of Taylor Hebert and her psychotic fangirls?”

Lisa laughs. “You wish. No, this is In Name Only Consulting, regular meetings Wednesdays from now until...whenever we figure this stuff out.”

I shake my head. “Uh-uh. What is it you remember about me? I mean, you’ve got one of these too, right? What is it, like, let me guess. We’re partners, you investigate murders, I eat people?”

Lisa shakes her head. “No, although that would be cool, kinda. I don’t  _ remember _ anything. I just know I’m not the Lisa you wrote about.”

Oh come on. “The Lisa I wrote about.”

“Yes. That one.”

“You’re not gonna betray any insider knowledge?”

She sighs. “I don’t have any. I don’t know what you wrote about. Why don’t you tell us?”

I relax. “In first person like they did?”

“If that’s what you feel is appropriate. However, please don’t do like Sophia did and use your story like a club -- I didn’t think she’d do that. I apologize.”

“I don’t. The look on her face, damn, that was kinda hot all by itself.” Hess grins.

“Jesus. She’s worse than ever.” I sigh. “Okay, so. A long time ago, back in 2011, a fourteen year old girl named Taylor Hebert got shoved into a locker by her friends Sophia and Emma…”

I haven’t used my story like a club. I’ve just started telling it. But Sophia already looks like a beaten dog. I grin, and continue.


	2. And Then I Shot Aster

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> SCREM. AMGERY. FEELS. Smol is badly mistreated :(

Dinah’s biting her nails as she listens to me. Definitely a junkie in at least one former life. Sophia is just...neutral. Is she judging me? Is she sympathizing in some secret heart she’s grown? Is she  _ tuned out _ ?! If so, first of all, how dare she, second of all, I would too, girl. Lisa is just...all right, listen, she only interacts with the world by means of smirks and raised --

THERE WE GO. Thank you. Eyebrows. I’m getting to the part where she was helping me map out our assault on the Golden Man. A sharp turn from her wasted talent. But that’s where we all found ourselves. At peak apocalypse, peak stress, peak darkness. The lights came out. Everyone was finally…

I look around me. They’re not reacting, and it takes me a minute to figure out that I’ve stopped talking. Lisa hands me a tissue, and I numbly take it. FUCKING SOPHIA HESS IS GIVING ME SHOULDER RUBS I HAVEN’T SEEN HER SINCE I WAS FOURTEEN WHAT DID I DO TO DESERVE

“Working together.” The last two words are sobs. “Is this what that might be like? Has it finally...are you all some story I wrote that’s coming true?”

Lisa smiles. “I’m afraid it can’t possibly be that simple. And if it were exactly as you’ve described, then a darkness is coming that I’m not sure we’re ready for.”

I nod. Sophia’s somehow gotten her claws into the  _ perfect _ kung fu grip for the knots on my shoulder. “When they let me visit you in Baumann-2 at the end I got real good at touching you the way you needed touched.”

I choke on a startled squawk. “Excuse me?”

“Needed. You know, shoulder rubs and shit. You were so far gone on your dark goddess trip that it hadn’t been safe to do  _ that _ shit since you were...huh. About the age you are now.”

She sits back down, clearly uncomfortable with the memories. “I see. All I’m going to say on the matter was that I’m very grateful for the shoulder rub, it was quite skillful, and I have no intentions of turning into some dark goddess. You’ll have to explain all that, by the way.”

“Eh. It’s just projection. I felt bad, so I made it up, right?”

Lisa shoots Sophia a look, and I wave her off gently. “Nah, it’s fine. She’s clearly...fuck, Hess, you’ve changed. A lot.”

“A lot of it was you.”

“Not me. But me. Another possible me?”

She thinks about that. “Yeah, I think so.”

“I haven’t seen you in almost a decade. We were children. Forgive me if I’m not sure that at the end, you were the only one with me, when I was…” I chose my next words carefully. Then I ripped the paper up and threw it into the wind. “Like you.”

“Oh, honey, you were worse. You were everything I wanted to be, then you were everything I feared becoming, then you were everything I truly deserved. And that, and only that, is why I followed your ass into a hell prison on an alternate earth. Because  **_NO ONE ELSE WAS WILLING TO BE ALONE WITH YOU!_ ** ” The emotion in her voice takes me aback. Then I remember, to her, this was real. Very real. She’s been through a lot, she hasn’t earned my anger.

“I feel like I’m only getting half the story here. Bits and pieces. I’m trying, Sophia. I am, okay?” I look to Lisa for just a little bit of help.

She brightens, and puts a hand on Sophia’s arm. “Why don’t you tell us how you came by this experience?”

“Guy named Brian, freshman year of college. He was one of these hotep bros, all ‘have you ever tried DMT’ in one hand and ‘my mom died of a crack OD’ on the other. So one night I tried it. When I came to...god. You blew up Los Angeles. Because it was easier than murdering, mind controlling, and otherwise  _ violating _ millions of human beings. Which, by the way, you no longer identified as. I was your shadow, the last of you that was human.  _ You blew up Los Angeles! You were willingly beyond recognition and help!  _ **_You hated me least and yourself most!_ ** It took me twelve hours passed out on this shitty plant to dream up everything I hated about me and blame it on you, and another ten of crying under the blankets to realize it wasn’t...it wasn’t you. Fuck you, Taylor. I’m  _ scared of you _ because I got better by being scared of you, and I haven’t been able to talk about it with anyone. Least of all you.”

My jaw, needless to say, is on the floor. “I feel like I need to apologize to you? Like it’s actually my fault somehow? Do you think it was a real me?”

She nods. “I can see the Vindex in your eyes. Rage and vengeance and self righteousness and fierce, fierce love...Jesus Hebert it  _ fucked me up _ , okay? I will never recover from what I imagined us going through.”

I shake my head. “You will. We’ll figure it out. But do we have to have weird sex?”

Sophia laughs. “Half of me wants to shrivel up and turn inside out and disappear into pocket dimensions as yet unknown to science, the other half is like, well, could we, please?”

All right. I gotta laugh at that.

Dinah has grown increasingly withdrawn. Angry, She’s glowering, picking at her arms. “You okay, Dinah?”

“No. No I am  _ not _ . When I was eleven, my niece Annie died. She was five. I always used to think it was funny as hell, having a niece. Then one day I didn’t. Brain cancer, The worst kind. Glioblastoma.” Sophia and I are looking at her now, listening. Trying to “hold space” for her or whatever hippie bullshit this is. Real weird cult, I tell you what. 

“So anyway. I have, in response to the horrific idea of knives cutting through my little baby niece’s brain  _ from the inside _ , the most luscious and technicolor early onset schizophrenic break you could imagine. Or maybe DID. The doctors aren’t even sure. All they know is that happy, rational Dinah with the soft voice and sad eyes has only been back around the place for a year or so. And I didn’t speak in a complete sentence from the time I was twelve until I was seventeen.”

Hess sucks in a breath. “Holy shit. I’m sorry.”

“Do you know  _ where I went _ during that time?”

I can’t fucking help myself, dear God, I can’t stop… “You said. The New Mexican desert, you killed the devil, all this weird Philip K Dick shit.”

Dinah growls at me like a feral cat ready for a fight. “ _ Fuck _ you. Yes, but it’s who  _ with _ . You two. You were the same person. You had her body, but both your minds were in there. And it wasn’t like I could tell myself I was trying to make sense of multiples or whatever by imagining I was you, because I was this, like, stupid hanger-on who was being  _ annoying as shit _ and pretending she was in control. And the more ridiculous and fucking  _ turgid _ things got, the more obtuse and serpentine this plot-loss-of-plot-glosso-robot --”

She throws the kleenex box across the room. “God DAMMIT! There I go, doing it again.”

Lisa’s shushing her softly. “Dinah, I told you this would be worth it, stick with me, okay?”

She nods. “Clanging makes me  _ so _ angry.”

“I know.”

“Anyway the more stupid it got the more I took control. I guess I was accepting that my life was just, like, a shitshow now? And then I  _ died _ . I literally died, knives through my fucking  _ brainpan _ , to save the world from a demon. And it was still about you, Taylor Hebert, and this cruel  _ blackface _ you’d put on to hide from how much you hate yourself, and your stupid fucking  _ mommy issues _ . So forgive me if for one second I express some mild and quite understandable outrage that you and Sophia Hess are all  _ palsy _ and fucked up and twisted over and just -- god, you’re always like this -- and --”

She bites this off, sucks in a deep breath, and spits it out at us. Covered in blood and phlegm. “ **_Still driving._ ** ”

Sophia whistles. “Shit. Now listen, I am so not responsible for that, thank you very much?”

Dinah nods. “I know. Believe me, I’m not trying to take it out on you. It just...I can’t help how i feel?”

Meanwhile my sanity and good intentions have left the building. I’ve been to group therapy, this is not group therapy, it doesn’t have  _ rules _ , I’m gonna really just 

“And do either of you think I could help the stories I wrote? They just poured out, I will  _ never _ know from where. Sophia, you were such a footnote I didn’t care about you the entire thing. Almost two million words, you stop being in it less than a quarter of the way through. Dinah here,” I’m giggling with nervous tension, standing up and pointing at her, “Fucking DInah here is just as much of a self righteous back seat driving addict in  _ my _ shit as she is in real life, apparently. As she is in her own fever dreams. Because of you, and two stupid cryptic pieces of paper, I  _ blew up my fucking life _ . I ruined everything. I thought it was just a story, but it was stuff I was already doing once we moved to Chicago. I hated Chicago, it wasn’t the Bay. But I had to, my life didn’t matter, only the stories did.”

I’m advancing, kinetically, Lisa holds up a hand, but to warn me, not stop me. Dinah raises her chin, sets her jaw. “And?”

“And because of you I let Jack fuck me up. Because of you,” I looked at Sophia, “Brian is all over the fridge like leftovers. Brian is still dead on the oil rig, Brian left me for  _ some other bitch _ in college. Because of you, Dinah, you fucking  _ twerp _ , I KILLED ASTER!”

Well. There. I’d said it. Normally I would sit back down. This time though, I was done. Forever. With both of them. Mania crashing like atomic waves on a silicate shore. “Dinah, you self righteous little prick. I get that you went through a lot of shit, but we all did. You were my poetic license to destroy my own life. I’m not over it. And now you’re my license to fuckin’  **_blow this popsicle stand_ ** .”

I turn on my heels and storm out, breathing fast and hard.

“Well shit,” Sophia says.

“She’ll be back sooner if we let her go,” says Lisa, trying to do some Mr Miyagi Ben Kenobi after school special bullshit. Truth is, I think I hate her most of all.

For Dinah, sobbing in the corner, the truth is that I have nothing but empathy.


	3. Anima

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> something something blackface something something mommy issues huh maybe smol had a point idk

That night, still wavering between sick pride and sicker shame at what I’ve done ( _beating up a retard, Hebert, you’re_ ~~ _just like her_~~ _everything she’s afraid of about herself, now_ ) I head for the Rocket 88 Bar and Grill, down off the boardwalk. Despite the numerological symbolism apparent from the name, it’s actually named after a rock and roll song from the very early fifties. An Oldsmobile car or something, a hot rod. _Because_ of the numerological symbolism, it has a certain...clientele. Which is why as I’m checking out the ass of an uh _mazing_ brunette white girl, I have to ask myself if I’d be okay with her screaming SEIG HEIL in a throaty MILF purr tonight. It takes me exactly six seconds of ass-ogling to decide I would be. After all, what would the Vindex do? “Hey there, Fraulein.” I tap her on the shoulder. “Buy you a drink?”  
  
She turns around, and she looks familiar. I can’t quite place her. “Yes,please.” I grin. _Heil Hebert_.  
  
“What’s your poison?”  
  
She looks distant briefly. “I’ve decided to try...other people’s poisons tonight.”  
  
I nod. “Jameson’s. Two of em.” I hold up two fingers, then turn them sideways. “Double, double, toil and trouble.”  
  
“I hope you’re not trying to seduce me. I’m afraid I’d be far too into that.” She giggles, giving the lie to the fact that she’s clearly old enough to be my…  
  
Okay brain, do not want. “Who said anything about trying?”  
  
She nods, swirling the Jameson’s and knocking it back. “All right then. What’s your name, stranger?”  
  
“Taylor. You come here for the music, the food, the booze, or…” I trail off. She knows what I mean.  
  
“Used to. I got kids, though. I can’t be involved with this shit anymore. Tonight I think I came here for you.”  
  
I nod. “White kids, can’t be in the movement anymore? You sure about that…” I trail off, upraised pause indicating a question inside a question.  
  
She intuits my meaning and answers. “Kayden, Kayden Anders.”  
  
 _Kids_. Plural. God damn it. What the hell.”You are,,,sure that we have never met.” I’m speaking slowly and distinctly, trying to make sure booze hasn’t totally annihilated my ability to perceive reality. Have I been locked in catatonic since my early teens, like Dinah? Hallucinating? Or is shit just out of control?  
  
She looks confused, then scared, then -- “Yes, I may have bumped into you when my husband was speaking, at one of the movement events. For that I apologize.”  
  
I have to laugh. “Oh, it’s hardly like that. Hardly at all.” It’s time to test some theories. “Shall we go back to my place?”  
  
She nods. “It’s a little sudden. Like everything else, lately, I guess. Why not.”  
  
I nod. “Savvy. Roll with the punches. So your husband is _the_ Max Anders?”  
  
“I mean, I didn’t think you’d know him, but yes.”  
  
“Face all over CNN. President, Kaiser. Kaiser, President. They say he was on Tucker Carlson, I didn’t care to check.”  
  
“He was most certainly not. _Thank God._ ” Good. She hates him as much as I...as I wrote her to? Does that make any damned sense?  
  
“So you’ve got kids.”  
  
“Yeah, Boy and girl. Eight and two.”  
  
“Aw, that’s neat.” I’m entirely too sure of my footing here. We walk up the steps, I unlock the door. It’s time to get my freak on, see what trouble I can get into. “I would have had a daughter that age by now. Had to abort -- he was bad news.”  
  
She puts her hand on mine. “I’m sorry.”  
  
I steel myself. “Her name was Aster.”  
  
She doesn’t betray a _glimpse_. I’m proud of Purity -- she’s as brilliant as when I first imagined her. “Lovely name for a girl.”  
  
I spring. Go in for the kiss -- she reciprocates. “That’s why I named your daughter that in the book I wrote in my teens.”  
  
She pulls away. “Mine?”  
  
”Yes. Kayden Anders, the superhero Purity. Here’s a picture I drew.” I rifle through papers and hand it to her.  
  
“This is impossible, you couldn’t possibly have --”  
  
“I know. But _I did_.”  
  
She’s shaking. I press the attack further still, grabbing her by the shoulders and leaning in close to her ear. “How’s Theo?”  
  
She knees me in the ribs, and I know how Jack must have felt. “If you’re one of Max’s people I’ll --” she fumbles for her shirt at 2 o’clock, reaching into her waistband, then curses shrilly as she comes up empty.  
  
“No, no. I’m the _Vindex_. It’s fucking insane, I know, but I wrote you. I was fourteen, I was in a group home -- hey, where the fuck are you goin’?” I’m slurring now, she’s gone. Her poise, her power, her _conscience_ , her Purity -- I had my first crush on someone I made up. Someone that in the end I didn’t have the courage to be. Someone who’s slamming my door, marching down my stairs.  
  
“Fuck.” I collapse into a chair, run my fingers through my hair. My cell rings. Don’t recognize the number, feels opportune, opportune probably bad. Pick it up anyway. “Taylor, whaaazzzuuppp”. Fuck, I must have had...many? Let’s go with _many_ Jameson’s.  
  
“I felt like I ought to call. You’re _okay_ , you know.” Lisa’s voice is unnaturally comforting. It feels so wrong, to know that people finally _care_ …  
  
“I’m not okay. Like, I’m really not. I just had a character from Worm up here to the apartment, spilled the beans, she freaked.”  
  
“Worm? Oh, the book you...right. What beans?” I punch the air. You’re a _champ_ , Lisa, just go with the fuckin’ flow like that.  
  
“Aster’s mom, in the story.”  
  
Lisa’s silent for a moment. “Oh dear. I hope you didn’t…”  
  
Really? This dumb bitch thinks I would..really? “No, Lisa, I did not tell her I killed...all right, I may have mentioned my Aster by name, but…”  
  
Lisa sighs. “What else did you do?”  
  
I giggle. “I told her I wrote her, and I called myself the...the Windex or whatever the dumb fuck Hess said. I’m the Windex, I drink cleaning fluid to keep from becoming a dark goddess.” I giggle harder.  
  
“Great. I was trying to keep ‘we might all be crazy’ from getting out. You know, just a bit longer?”  
  
I laugh harshly. “You’re the crazy ones, bish, nahhme.” Slurring again, damn. I hate that.  
  
“Well _anyway_. Sophia has graciously offered to join your drunk ass in Baumann-2. I sent her over, she should be there any minute. Be nice, okay?”  
  
I shake my head. “You care too much.”  
  
She’s stern, motherly. Like Kayden was, the missing flint when I had to face Jack. “No. I most certainly don’t.”  
  
“Yeah. How’s Dinah?” _I do care, you know. I actually feel bad, even?_  
  
Lisa sighs. “I haven’t heard word one since we all left. Since the last thing she said before you blew it up, actually. She’s got, like, _catatonic states_. I’m worried she’s headed for one. Thanks for that, by the way.”  
  
I shake my head. _God dammit, Hebert…_ “I’m s--”  
  
Lisa quite rudely interrupts me. “I know. It’s okay. She’s got...issues being able to be fair about this shit.”  
  
“And you? What’s your story? You ever gonna tell?”  
  
“A thousand monkeys, a thousand typewriters, Taylor, and you’d still have no idea. Doesn’t matter.”  
  
“Why doesn’t it matter?”  
  
“It doesn’t.” _Oooookay then. Be that way_.  
  
There’s a knock at the door, harsh and quick, then softer and slower. “She’s here. Or the landlord, or the cops.”  
  
“Saved by the bell.” Lisa laughs. “Don’t end up evicted or in jail. See you soon.”  
  
“Awright, mom. Night.”  
  
She’s back to warm and fuzzy again. “Night, Taylor.”  
  
I open the door, and I’m amazed at how happy I am to see her again. I shouldn’t be. This should feel all wrong, but it _doesn’t_. I’m getting better.  
  
Maybe we all can get better together.


	4. Obligatory PHO Interlude

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> xxx void cowboy xxx sez: they're gonna be a cluster trigger lol!
> 
> not a dragon sez: lol b&
> 
> winged 1 sez: lmfao

**_Iphigenia/Karjaki The Insalubrious_ **

Inside the particle storm that remains of your precious mind, you wait. Patiently, an aerie of eagles on a peak. Silently, a pack of wolves, in a damp warren deep within pines. Calmly, a flotilla of starships behind a blazing binary sun. 

You are Shadow Stalker’s chance. Her conscience. The Nair Ray Tor. This is _your_ story, if you could but learn to tell it without ruling cruelly over the softness within the others. 

Inside the catatonia, you are not dead, but dreaming. The anatomy of story speaks to you, sings in sibilant sussurades. Cries in a hollow chest, rebounds like blinding blades in a blackened skull. It hurts, but you didn’t spend five years in Shadow Stalker’s stalking shadow simply to have not seen not only the _bones_ of story but the Devil’s share -- the why of crisis, the marrow of character, the pain of verbs loosed like arrows.

You just wish you’d said something differently. Right now there is a 93% chance that this will go badly.

_Because you’re locked in. You are Shadow Stalker’s, not your own. She has no goddamn right. And how do you teach her that, gently, without breaking them both?_

**_The Shadow of Vindex_ **

_Last known profile of subject indicates profound, obsessive attachment to Victor Prime, It’s believed by Alcott and Dallon that she desires to atone for harms done to Prime -- mostly bullying, but one more profound wrong, a wound to the outer sclera of the eyeball and the skin and muscle surrounding the orbital, caused with a Buck Marksman, improperly sharpened, possibly dirty --_

_Nononono wake_ **_up_ ** _you stupid bitch, this isn’t real, it’s all fake, she_ **_forgave you_ ** _\--_

_You are Shadow Stalker’s, well, Shadow Stalker. As you study the detailed, obtuse, surreal synthpop stylings of Nick Land or the Tiger 53, you begin to understand -- in any sufficiently complex system of interlocking harm, the first victim must be the self. Ashby’s Law therefore indicates that --_

_Parahumans and Dragons, Player’s Handbook, 7th Edi --_ **_fuck you, Hebert, you dumbass, I love you to bits but there’s hardly room on this couch --_ **

**_Skitter_ **

You haven’t been able to sleep well all night. Maybe it’s guilt over what you did to Kayden. How you destroyed her fragile notions of safety, her attempts to find herself -- how you knew who she was and did it anyway. Maybe it’s the booze corroding your stomach. Maybe it’s fuckin’ Sophia Hess fidgeting, like this is a sleepover and you guys are -- but you never _did_ those with her when you were fourteen. Wow, things change a lot. 

Did you do _that_? Nah, you were too drunk. You couldn’t have gotten it up. You are Shadow Stalker’s stalking shadow, though, you are the selfsame righteous anger and earned pain she’s most afraid of -- you don’t need to get it up, you --

_“We need to save the girl,” Taylor says, looking at Lisa pleadingly. “I know it’s not a villain thing, but if we can convince everyone we’re finally_ **_okay_ ** _maybe she’ll wake up…”_

_Lisa looks down at Taylor, taking her by the chin. “Pet, you know there’s only so much you can do. Especially in your condition, You’re --”_

_“A pathetic drunken child, I know. But please help me anyway? Help me save Dinah.”_

_Lisa nods. “I will.”_

**_Telltale_ **

Your heart bleeds for the others in your ring. The petals of the flower, the rays of the star. The afterimages of Aster. Ring is one word. Support group, cult, all correct. A word the endless yearning in your heart seems to be striving toward being able to use is “cluster”. The first. 

Dinah is the childish idealism. Sophia the impetuous refusal to listen to better advice. Taylor the wings. You? You’re just the wax. Together you can be Icarus, the first of many. The ground is fertile, with the bodies of the dead, and wet, with the tears of the contrite and honest. 

**_Dawn comes. The tale must be told._ **

You didn’t really _want_ to draw them into a mortal coil older than time, a boiling cauldron of epiphanies and utopias. But the shard of a broken dream resting inside the heart of Sarah Livesay, recently deceased by her own -heart- hand, simply will not let you. 

The typewriter has chewed you up and spit you out. The tale must be told. The broken must be made whole. If the patient screams the knife must be sharpened. Healing has a price. The one you’re willing to make them pay is “any”.

You just hope they can help you, too, before it’s too late. Before you go to join Rex, under the lake. 

How many more sleeps until dawn, you wonder? You’re here for the duration. You are Shadow Stalker’s guide through this. And Dinah’s, too.


	5. You Needed Worthy Opponents

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Slice of life...ON THE STREETS.

I wake up, my body brittle with what seems to have been centuries of stony sleep. Couches are like that, racks for sleeping people and luxurious perches when you’re awake. I take a second to collect my thoughts, realizing that I’ve had a deep thought and a literary reference before “collecting my thoughts” -- mama didn’t raise no illiterate dumbass, that’s for sure. Why do I think all that genius shit as easy as breathing but I can’t remember if Kayden stayed last n...no. No, it can’t be. It would have been a lot easier if she had, and if the person cooking bacon and eggs in my kitchen wasn’t…

“Fucking god damn fucking motherfuck!” I scream, standing up and stretching my legs like some sort of evil rooster.

  
  


Sophia pokes her head in. “I  _ love _ your vocabulary. Very expressive. Glad to see you’re awake -- you had a rough night.”

I cross the room resolutely in no more than three steps and aim a right hook at her nose. She turns, just in time, and it hits her jaw fairly solidly. 

She just stands and looks at me, somewhat sadly. “I didn’t actually say I was sorry yet, did I?”

“And now you don’t have to. Is breakfast almost ready?” I make a show of dusting off my knuckles.

She smiles. “Yeah, it is. There’s some stuff I wanted to go over with you, though?”

I look at the kitchen table, horrified to see what must be at least a dozen thick three ring binders sitting stacked, one atop the other. She playfully smirks, clearly intentionally misinterpreting the horror on my face. “Oh, not all of it. That’s gotta be what, two million words? Most of it free-written, no editor. Ain’t nobody got time for that.”

She’s flipping through the first book, now. “Where Madison was cute, a late bloomer, Sophia and Emma were the types of girls that fit the ‘prom queen’ image. Sophia was dark skinned, with a slender, athletic build she’d developed as a runner on the school track team.” She grins at me.

“This Sophia character sounds kinda hot.”

I try to snatch the book away from her, but she’s nimbly playing keepaway. I’d have a flashback, but I’m not a  _ kid _ anymore and I  _ drink them away _ and besides I’m  _ good I forgave her _ \--

“I’d ask if you had a crush on me but you spend half the first chapter talking about Madison. It’s clear you didn’t.” She smirks again, and I just stand there, fuming at this  _ invasion _ Lisa has aided, abetted, even inspired. 

“Are you done?”

“Hell no, I ain’t done. This shit with ‘Brian is all over the fridge’ had me confused, so I did some looking.” She picks up the second binder and reads from it. 

“I broke the kiss and looked him in the eyes as I settled back in my seat. Even before he opened his mouth to say something, I was giving him the smallest shake of my head. He closed his mouth.

When I looked away, I felt his arm settle around my shoulders.

I looked and didn’t see Sophia at the front of the bus. When I checked over my shoulder, I found her near the back. She was staring at me.” She fans herself dramatically.

“Wowee, the  _ sparks _ here. The tension. The chemistry! But with who?” She wiggles her eyebrows at me. “Although I’m more surprised Brian is, like...we’re on the same wavelength here about  _ something _ .”

We’re not doing this right now. Before I realize that what  _ I _ am doing is being unnecessarily cruel, it’s flown my mouth again. A barbed bolt, lethal. No tranquilizers. And a swarm of bees. 

“Interlude 10. It’s in the one you’re holding.”

She nods, looking down and flicking through it. Then she goes silent for a time, reading. Then she looks up at me, and it’s that same fear in her eyes I saw the other night. Intoxicating. “Breakfast is getting cold,” she says, simply.

We eat in silence. I can only imagine what she’s thinking. She went out of her way like this for an asshole, an asshole who scares her to death, and I told her about all this shit I  _ felt _ once, that I put on the page...okay, that’s an idea. We can talk about this.

“It felt like you were invading a very private space, to just find you rooting through the manuscript like that. That’s why I reacted that way.”

She looks up from her eggs and nods. “The flute.”

My stomach goes cold. I haven’t even thought of that for so long. “Yes, exactly like that. What were you thinking, oh, I can just make her breakfast, snuggle her on the couch, everything will be fine, I can go right back to invading her and putting her embarrassing secrets on display? Dear God, you and Lisa are going to get along just like you and Emma did, I can feel it.”

She shakes her head, thinking. The silence is uncomfortable. I find my breath shallowing. Then she breaks the tension. “She had the opportunity to become like Emma. She chose not to. I’ve never been anyone but Sophia and I do not intend to stop, just because you want to, like, weaponize your fragility against me or some shit.”

I’m baffled. Stymied. Stunned. Angered! “You’re an asshole, is what you are. An invasive asshole who doesn’t care about her impact on other people!”

She holds up a fork. “You are very wrong about only  _ one _ of those things, and the rest is dead on. I didn’t mean to hurt you, like that. I was just...shit, Hebert, I was just playin’ and I forgot you aren’t used to it.”

“I am used to it. That’s the entire issue. I’m  _ very _ used to Sophia Hess being herself around me.”

She shakes her head. “I don’t think you are. You’re used to me needing to prove something to someone who thinks I’m a stepping stone.”

“Weaponize my...what the fuck, though.”

“Just because I’m a  _ lot to take _ doesn’t mean you’re not capable of taking it. We’ve both been through some shit that had nothing to do with the other, I would actually love it if we could start fresh.”

“Well we can’t.” I put my fork down. “I thought we could but we can’t.”

She looks distant for a moment, as if she’s lost in memory. “Los Angeles is an inlet. A crater. Because a powerful strategist -- Wonder Woman but she’s  _ also _ the World’s Greatest Detective --”

I interrupt her. “Holy shit, Alexandria?”

“I guess you did mention her in the stuff I read, yeah. Anyway, Alexandria is the head of the Protectorate, there, in this...trip I had. She was onto you, somehow, and it was the easiest thing for your plan to just...a gal named String Theory hooked you up with a mass driver, and  _ poof _ .”

I nod. “I made up String Theory too.”

“Lisa texted me. Said you made up Kayden Anders, tried to fuck her last night.”

“So you think we’ve shared misery and I did bad things and you’re owed...what, exactly?”

She shakes her head. “No. I’m not asking either of us to pretend that  _ anything _ that affects how we feel about each other didn’t happen to us. Haven’t you given this any thought at all, though? You apparently made Dinah up. Or didn’t, cottoned onto her existence and specific issues independently of that, somehow. And when you find out that she’s  _ never _ someone different from the person you wrote about, you fucking blow her head off with a verbal torrent of...frankly extremely well written shit. Extemporaneously.”

I’m eating again. Wave my fork at her, chewing. “G’n.”

“I’m still scared of you. Nothing you’ve personally demonstrated to me since we met tells me that you’re  _ nearly _ as bad as the version of you I...needed, I guess. I deserved that, it was on me. They talk about a ‘dweller on the threshold’ who shows you the worst parts of you, a kinda final boss for DMT trips. You were mine. And we both know why, and that’s fair. But that wasn’t you, and this person you wrote about Regent doing that to wasn’t me. It was something you were working through  _ about _ me. With me so far?”

A swig of OJ. “Yeah.”

“I don’t want you to...write me out, like you did to Alexandria or to Shadow Stalker. I’m actually scared you can do that, somehow.”

I consider this. “I hadn’t had time to think about that. Can I?”

“I don’t know. Brian...it’s Brian. I was dating Brian. Grue. From Worm. He gave me the DMT, and you wrote it like I hated him...after the DMT, I did, because he showed me what a shit I was. Maybe he’s out there, too.”

I nod. “Maybe everyone is. Maybe Coil, and Contessa, and...holy shit, I bet Contessa is after us right now. My mommy issues will have their revenge! Oh no!”

Sophia rolls her eyes. “Stop being flip with me, this is serious. It’s obvious to me that powers exist,  _ in some sense _ . We haven’t been brought together by coincidence, but by memories of a shared reality, or subset of parallel realities. One you may or may not be able to affect. And that worries me, because of what you did to Dinah. Maybe I don’t  _ need _ to exist, maybe I deserve your revenge. But she doesn’t know you, she’s never met you, she didn’t deserve your verbal takedown, as right as it was in places. And I need to know, is any weird power that only you have going to fuck the rest of us, or the world, up -- not because it’s a power, and you shouldn’t have it, but because you can’t handle the emotional baggage in play here?”

Huh. I hadn’t thought of that. At all, really. I was too busy feeling insulted by Lisa even existing, and then too busy feeling extremely  _ grateful _ by Lisa even existing. With a little rage and misguided sex in between. Fuck. “I don’t know. I hope not.”

She nods. “Good enough.”

My eyes meet hers for the first time all morning, and there’s real warmth in hers, and, I hope in mine. “Thanks, by the way.”

“Don’t thank me yet, Hebert.” But she’s grinning.

My cell rings. It seems that the one  _ sensible _ thing I did last night was to save Lisa as a contact. “Hey, Lisa.”

“Hey, Taylor. So. Good news and bad news.”

Uh-oh. “Yeah?”

Sophia’s looking at me, expectantly. I hold up a hand, she nods.

“Dinah’s...okay. As much as anyone can be in these circumstances. Not what you did to her. It’s this idea that she’s  _ not _ in control that fucked her up. Maybe you’d guessed that.”

“It wasn’t my extremely well written yet extemporaneous torrent of verbal abuse?”

“I hope that’s not you bragging on what a bitch you are, that’s my job.”

“Sophia bragged on what a bitch  _ I  _ am, so you’ve got competition now.”

“Ooo. Okay, anyway, listen. Dinah wants to read the book. The entire book.”

I have to pause for a minute, take that in. “I’m not letting even Sophia do that, despite her best efforts.”

Lisa sighs. “Is she harassing you? I can come make her behave.”

“She is, but it’s just life right now. I’ll get used to it. But listen, I don’t want to…”

“No,” says Lisa. “I can’t make you do anything. I can’t make you expose that part of yourself to Dinah. But she has done  _ nothing _ to you. And besides, she’s offering to read almost two million words of self-indulgent dreck you keep in a shoebox, without being begged. Most authors would kill for this.”

“Fine. You have a point.”

“Don’t I always?” Lisa laughs.

“That..remains to be seen.”

“And you will. You’ll all see! Muwahahaha!” I roll my eyes. “Hey, can I bring her over? We can get the book, maybe go someplace and hang out for a bit.”

“I suppose. You sure she’s okay?”

“Hey. Here at In Name Only consulting when someone says they’re okay we take them at their word. She’s trying to be.”

“Right, that makes sense. Tell her I’m --”

“You’re not, first of all. Don’t ever lie to smol. I call her smol, by the way -- it’s a long story, but it’s a thing.”

I look at Sophia. “Smol.”

“Yeah. Anyway, second of all, when you are, tell her yourself, okay?”

“All right, fair.”

Lisa’s voice is much happier now. “Good. I’ll swing by her place, get myself some coffee, be over in about an hour, tops. Damn, I’m barely awake. Coffeeeeeeee….”

  
“Coffee.”

“Yeah! Anyway, ta-ta for now!”

“Bye, Tigger.” I’m laughing again.

Sophia looks at me. “Well?”

“Long fucking story. But for my crimes I have been condemned to, apparently, have friends and adoring readers. So I’m kinda thinking whatever it is I’m doing I should keep doing it.”

She nods. “You should.”


	6. VALISA

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Another entity appears! A plot emerges! Taylor is a grump! SMOL TAKES REVENGE!

They arrive, bundled up in winter coats, breath steaming on the stoop. The thing I like about this place is that my front step  _ holds _ \-- it always embarrassed me, not being able to control it, having a father who would not fix it -- had these two stood on it they would have fallen into hell when it cracked.

Oh. Right. I wrote a book about that.

“I want to see the book.” Dinah’s eyes flash.

“Hey, Dinah. Listen, I’m sorry about --”

“Taylor Hebert, no amount of apology can interest me in you right now. I want to read your story. I want to know you  _ as you believe yourself to be _ , not this ‘sorry’ thing you’ve presented me with. Not the version that ‘destroyed her life’.” She  _ elbows past me  _ and into my living room, like she owns the place, what the fuck, who does this _?! _

“Um...k?”

Lisa looks at me apologetically. “I told you she wasn’t over it.”

“Sophia, where is her thing? Where is this nonsense? It will take me about forty-eight hours consecutive, I wish to begin immediately.” The sound of binders rummaging around, dishes being put away. “Thank you. All right.”

Dinah comes back in bearing Arcs 1 (Gestation) through 5 (Hive), sits down, and begins reading. 

“Some of that stuff really happened to me,” I venture lamely.

“I’m reading,” Dinah says crossly. “Don’t interrupt.”

Sophia’s just looking at us like this is the funniest thing in the world. I open and close my mouth a couple times, then look at Lisa. “What the fuck am I supposed to do? She’s not taking it home with her!”

“I figured you’d say that. Which is why we both brought PJs and a toothbrush.”

I bristle. The  _ imposition _ of this presumptuous woman! “No. You’re not staying the night.”

Lisa looks up at Sophia from her nest on the couch next to Dinah. “Sophia, are we staying the night?”

She waves her hands apart, shaking her head. “Hey, it ain’t my house. Ain’t my circus, ain’t my monkeys. But.” She smirks. “I’m sure as hell staying the night. What’s two more?”

I glare at her, betrayed. “How’s that supposed to work, they post up on the couch and we...oh, I see what you did there. I get it.”

“I mean, I wasn’t gonna suggest anything, but I like where your head went without me doing so.”

Lisa grins, as I continue glowering. “Honestly, Taylor, the four of us should move into someplace better. You need the company, I don’t even...honestly I’m living in my car, for reasons I prefer not to explain, and it would help everyone, I think. Good use of resources.”

“Jesus, this really is a cult!”

“I mean, I guess? It’s an idea.”

Dinah looks up. “Please leave. I would like to read in peace.”

I sputter. “Leave  _ where _ ?! There’s a kitchen and a bedroom, this is the room people  _ live _ in.”

She shakes her head. “Not right now it isn’t. Get the fuck out or I will  _ make _ you leave.”

“Lisa, she can’t just kick me out of my own house.”

Lisa looks at me. “You kicked yourself out for at least a bit, when you blew up at her the other night. Let’s go. Lunch is on me.” She’s got her coat and she’s already headed for the door, clearly brooking no argument.

“How are you affording lunch if you’re living in your car,” asks Sophia.

“I said I was living in my car, I didn’t say why. I have money. Let’s  _ go _ .”

We follow her outside, me kind of just...spacing out because it’s easier than arguing. I can’t believe this is happening. 

  
“Why do you let her walk all over us? Why don’t you put up some boundaries?” I’m asking Lisa, because I know no one wants to let  _ me _ do it. I’m not stupid.

“Taylor, Dinah is really in a lot of ways mentally twelve. You are not. You  _ choose _ to be an asshole, you  _ choose _ to destroy yourself. You  _ choose _ to blame Dinah for that, as if that makes any goddamn sense to anyone at all. She has not chosen a goddamn thing, except to force you out of your home so she can read a fun story that I’m sure will appeal to her inner child and its need for heroes, leave her spirits high at the end of the tale. It’ll do that, right?”

She studies my reaction, then smiles slyly. “I thought not. Dinah chose to hurt herself worse so she can help you, and you will let her make that choice. When she wants to choose to not be so much of a spoiled brat, she will, and we will let her make that choice too. All right?”

“I guess. I mean, it’s like there are all these...rules now. Impositions. I am being  _ bullied _ by a  _ trio _ of people which includes Sophia, and you say you mean well, but...do you? All kinds of head games just to get my attention, Lisa, what’s really going on?”

“What’s really going on is that Sophia and Dinah lived their lives convinced that they were their own people, independent of any other living person’s imagination, until something happened to convince them that they didn’t. I suspect Kayden Anders is having a similar crisis right now. All of them have this confusion because of you. Did you know that we had a lot of arguments about even involving you, because they were afraid of you?”

“No, I didn’t.” I think back to what Sophia said earlier, all of it, taken together. “Sophia, you really think I can write you out of existence?”

“I think the stupidest thing is that you don’t try to. You could be a God, and you don’t seem to notice. Or care.”

I buckle my seatbelt, in back, Sophia riding shotgun. The car pulls out. “How was I supposed to notice before you? Nothing about Worm came true.”

“Well part of why I’m scared is that I do not know how that’s supposed to work for you. We’re having serious existential crises here.”

Lisa adjusts the rear view mirror so she can see my reaction. “So Taylor, people are angry with you, and suspicious of you, because they think you’re someone you’re not, and then you went off on them as if they were right to be suspicious in the first place.”

“But not Sophia? Sophia was nice?”

“She was. She also doesn’t blame you for things. She  _ should _ , I think. It would be irrational, but her equanimity bothers me for all the reasons Dinah’s anger doesn’t.”

“I just don’t think it’ll help. She’s not  _ that _ . The Vindex kept her counters clean.”

“And my windows?” I mug at Sophia, who rolls her eyes. 

“Yes, and the windows. Although the self inflicted hell prison is a nice touch, given what I know. The second Birdcage was your idea, you know. People who couldn’t handle your glory needed to be kept safe. That’s why Dragon and I talked you into going in voluntarily. Without the air quotes.”

I laugh. “Dragon, huh?”

She nods. “Who you had rewritten to be an ersatz copy of your mother. Which broke good old Defiant right in half.”

“Jesus.” I’m shivering, even though Lisa has the heat on. “That’s fucked up.”

“So imagine that I spent ten hours on drugs with a version of you that scares  _ you _ . And now I’m being nice to you? You’re lucky, Hebert. You don’t deserve shit, but here I am.”

Lisa shakes her head. “The point is, we have a shared language to talk about what’s happening to us. We have people who have been through the same things, or similar enough ones. And the world is at a crisis point. Impeachment, coronavirus, the breaking apart before a coming together. Always hurts. I want to do something about it.”

I nod. “Makes sense. A little culty, but the Vindex kinda would get off to leading a cult.”

“See, I knew you’d get into it once you had the chance.”

“So what’s your backstory, Lisa? How do you fit in? You’ve been cagey before. Spill it.”

“I’m your ward.” She chuckles.

“What does that mean?”

“You need someone to take care of. Someone to keep you safe from everything inside you. I’m both of those.”

I nod. “Whatever.”

Sophia looks away from the window. “So where are we going?”

“Fugly Bob’s. Who’s up for that?”

“There are other places, you know.” I know why she’s picked it, and I’m pissed off.

“Yeah, but that one’s in Worm a lot.”   
  


“I’m irritated that I knew you knew that.”

Sophia looks confused. “Wait, what.”

Lisa grins. “Just confirming some theories, as we mess around. Dinah’s a fast reader, I figure we can spend the whole day just...having adventures, and then be home when she’s halfway through, no later.”

“Experimentation, then.”

“Yes. Everything is an experiment, if you’re living right, but you, Taylor...you are a feast for the mind. You fascinate me.”

  
“And  _ you _ annoy me to death.”

“Good!” She cackles.

We pull up to Fugly’s, and we walk in. It’s too cold to be driving around. I don’t think I’ve ever explained exactly how it works -- there are varying theories. It’s simple. Fugly Bob’s has takeout bags, yes. It has fast food style burgers, yes. It’s fundamentally a sit down joint, with waitstaff. One of whom is a particularly large wart on my particularly small ass, as she has done nothing with her life. Reminds me of someone, and I hate her.

It is for this reason, and the ongoing torment I am being forced into, that

“Hi, my name is Madison, and I’ll be your waiter today!” The vapid footnote grins at our group, nonexistently. I glower, grimace, and rave internally. You know how we tell kids their high school bullies will be serving them burgers when they grow up, as if this matters, as if it’s revenge? It’s true. It  _ doesn’t fucking help _ .

“Yeah, Madison. The usual.”

Lisa looks up. “I’m uh, still looking at the menu. Never been. Nice to meet you, Madison. I’ve heard things.”

Maidson raises an eyebrow. “You have?”

“Mhm.” Lisa looks over at Sophia. “Weird things.”

Sophia looks up. “Um, hey, Maddie.”

The recognition on her face is  _ priceless _ .

“Sophia? And Taylor? I can’t imagine...I’ve got to hear the story there.”

“My. Usual.”

Sophia shakes her head. “Grumpy guts is hungry, maybe later?”

Madison nods. “I would  _ love _ to tell you about my book I’m working on.”

Sophia looks surprised. “I didn’t know you wrote.” I’m becoming increasingly agitated, and only Sophia’s hand on my arm under the table keeps me from going full Karen. I hate her, so much.  _ Writing _ is something I will not allow her to do.

Unfortunately you can’t just...stop people from doing that. Well, maybe I  _ could _ . But I can’t use my powers for evil, can I? Maybe if I convince myself I’m only informing on the people I’m doing it with…

Yeah, because that worked so well last time.

“People surprise you, though. I never thought Taylor would come back here, for example. She hardly talks to me, and I get why, but --”

Sophia cuts her off, saving me. I’m starting to  _ like _ Sophia Hess. Which bothers me. “The mushroom swiss, Clements. Large orange Fanta. Fries. Lisa? You ready?”

“Just a house salad, I think? And some coffee. God I need so much coffee. I have to babysit these two, Madison, you understand, don’t you?” Lisa mock pouts, and I actually have to stifle a laugh.

Madison grins. “Better you than me! All right, I’ll be right back.”

I look at Lisa, and snarl. “I  _ hate _ her.”

“Why, because she’s stuck in this dead end town on a dead end road, and you’re not? There’s a story there, you know.”

I shake my head. “Don’t care. It’s her life to ruin.”

“No.” Lisa is dead serious, in quest giver mode again. “There’s a  _ story _ there. I know these things.”

Sophia snaps her fingers. “Fuck. You have some kinda powers too.”

Lisa nods. “Wondered when someone would pick that up.”

“What about me, do I?”

“I don’t know. I hope we find out soon. Hey, Taylor, can I get your email real quick?”

“Sure, why? It’s  [ littleowlindaylight@gmail.com ](mailto:littleowlindaylight@gmail.com) .”

  
She nods. “Mhhhmmm. I need a place to dump links, theories, relevant stuff I find. Try to figure this mystery out.”

“I am not a mystery.” 

She shakes her head. “No, but we are. Together. That’s different.”

“How?” 

She smiles. “Were it merely you, this entire thing would be an inquisition. Or a cult in the destructive sense. We are all mysteries to each other, some for different reasons than others. And exploring this, together, will allow us to help each other. To make us ready for the new world I’m...half afraid of.”

“Why do I always find the crazy ones?”

Sophia smirks. Our food has arrived, and Madison is looking at Sophia expectantly, awaiting her answer. “I mean, look at you, Hebert. Why do you think?”

Lisa looks at Madison, interrupting a contribution I’m  _ sure _ I wanted to hear. “I’m picking up the check for the table, if I can get that now?”

Madison nods, producing a folder from her apron. “Sure. Here you go.”

Lisa takes out her credit card and a pen, signs the receipt, writes  _ something else  _ on it, finishes with a flourish, and hands it back to Madison with a grin. Oh, no. I’ve been betrayed. Again. More help I don’t need.

Madison looks at the receipt. Her eyes widen with surprise. She puts it away, quietly, and heads for the cash register.

  
We eat, in silence, for a moment. Thinking. Well, I’m thinking. I don’t really  _ care _ what they do. I’m sure they’ll tell me when they’re interested in doing so.An


	7. If One In Four Is A Good Day, What Was Today?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Madison is Browbeat. Taylor's liquor cabinet gets roasted. Dinah comes around.

_ I’m sitting in the belly of the Glaurung, quietly going over my briefings. It’s all very simple. The world has gone mad, a part of it has become worthless to its rulers. I have gone mad. I, too, have become useless. For my crimes and misbehavior, but primarily for my uselessness, I have been sentenced to a fate worse than death. I am to aid the broken and uselsss and mad in upholding the broken and useless and mad against itself. Perhaps to atone for what I did. _

_ Dragon speaks over the intercom. “Are you comfortable, Browbeat? I can turn up the heat if you need me to.” _

_ “I’m fine.” My mask has a voice changer, so I sound very masculine, very powerful. It’s the image people need for a Brute. If they knew Madison Clements was a scared little girl who had never been more scared, they’d laugh their heads off. _

_ When I was in detention, after the Wards found out -- after the Shadow Stalker inquiry -- I read a lot about that. About what scared people can do. Annette Hebert wrote extensively on the rise of fascism, about the kinds of people who had joined the early movement. _

_ She had not been describing Taylor. Had Taylor decided that an evil cabal was out to persecute her, she would have been right. Had she decided that a swift, violent response was the only way to preserve her soul, I think she might also have been right. And Sophia might well have approved.  _

_ “Dragon.” _

_ “Yes?”  _

_ “You’re sure Shadow Stalker is in the MCZ.” _

_ “Positive. I delivered her here a few months ago. We’re coming in, by the way.” _

_ I nod, readying myself for the worst. “You’ll visit?” _

_ “We’ll work together often. I don’t have a mind, not as such, so I’m immune to residual influence that may exist.” _

_ “Great, just what I needed. A reminder of the horrors to come.” _

_ “They’re...understated. You had your choice of punishment details, though. Why Madison? It’s not just the name, is it?” _

_ “Not hardly. It’s that...Sophia didn’t get a choice, because what she did was so criminal. I wanted to have the same fate. Despite my record.” _

_ “Some might say you’re a true hero, Madison.” _

_ “I want to be.” _

_ The Glaurung lands. A hatch opens, we say our goodbyes. I stand, manacled, on the tarmac, waiting for PRT operatives to come and undo my restraints, set me up with access, brief me.  _

_ I don’t know what’s next, but I hope it doesn’t hurt quite as bad as...whatever Taylor’s going through right now.  _

I wish I’d never opened this email. It meets every definition of “cursed” it is possible to meet. First of all, it’s an obsessively stupid attempt to wrangle with things she should have outgrown by writing hackneyed superhero fiction. Second, I  _ hate _ those. Third, my fans  _ love _ them. My fucking fan club. Fourth, fourth... _ do I even need to say it _ ?

I scream. “MADISON HAS WORMS IN HER BRAIN TOO!!!”

Dinah, predictably, scolds me with the fury of a thousand suns. “I’m reading,  _ shut up _ . I’ve told you several times.”

“Come on, Dinah,” Sophia pleads, for the severalth time. “It’s her fucking apartment.”

“I don’t care,” says Dinah. 

Lisa looks over my shoulder. “Too fucking cool. Also, I told you! Man, I’m good. Do you think we ought to hang out with her?”

“She’s not repentant. She just thinks she is.”

Lisa nods. “Right, I’m sure, now that you mention it. How could I have missed the obvious signs?”

“Sarcasm will get you nowhere.”   
  


“But it’s fun?” Lisa grins, and I rue the day the word  _ vulpine _ was invented. It is tailor made to describe this  _ thing _ on her face, and nothing else, and perhaps if we got rid of the word…

I shake my head. “You just gave her my fucking email.”

“Yes! And if I knew how gloriously  _ mad _ you’d be, I’d have offered her a spot on your couch, too!” Lisa claps her hands gleefully.

“Fuck you, that’s not even funny.”

Sophia is eating leftover fries and looking over my shoulder, now. “What’s this? Oh shit, that’s my name, and I...what the fuck? Did you write this, Hebert?”

I cannot fucking  _ believe _ this. “No, I did not. Madison was  _ never _ Browbeat. I  _ killed _ Browbeat, I just didn’t make it obvious in the text.”

She laughs. “Well, you should have, I guess. Would have at least prevented this? I guess?”

“I bet if I did it now it would kill Madison.”

  
Lisa looks at me like she’s scolding a puppy. “No. Bad Taylor. We’re not going to start off with our power by  _ killing _ people. Not permitted.”

I sigh. “Fine. But why? Why her?”

Sophia shrugs. “Why me?”

I nod. “You have a point.”

“I wonder if E--” I interrupt Sophia  _ quickly _ . “No. Never. We will  _ neeeeever _ ask this question.”

Dinah chimes in. “Whatever is going on in there had better justify distracting me.”

I growl. “Dinah, you’re being a cunt because you think it’ll control us, and you think controlling us will make you feel better. I wrote your entire mind and it made me feel worse, not better. Knock it off.”

“Yes ma’am,” she says meekly.

“It’s a start,” sighs Lisa. “Again, she had that coming.”

“Jesus, Hebert, where was this when we were kids?”

“Where was this Sophia when  _ we _ were kids?”

She munches a fry. “All right, point. It does  _ not _ suck though. Kinda hot, again.”

“What part of me trying to get in bed with a literal Nazi when I’m drunk has you thinking you have a chance?”

“The part where you tried to get in bed with a literal Nazi?”

“All right, point. I suppose you’re worse.” She throws a fry at me. 

I pick it up and eat it, and grin at her. She grins back. 

Lisa chuckles ominously. “Foreplay. All according to keikaku.”

“Keikaku?”

“Keikaku means plan.” Lisa looks at me as if this is the most obvious thing in the world, which makes perfect sense. It of course does not. 

“It’s clearly not  _ your _ plan, genius. She’s been trying to make it a thing since day one.”

Sophia looks at me all hangdog. “I’ve been trying to make  _ us _ a thing.”

Sheer horror overtakes my expression. “For god’s sake, WHY.”

She smirks. “We were a thing? And to see the look on your face when you realized you liked it?”

I wag a warning finger. “It’s all fun and games until someone loses an eye.”

“Now you’re talking. Ooo mama.”

Meanwhile, Iago here has moseyed her way into the other room. She’s looking down at Dinah in the recliner, concerned. “Everything going okay?”

“Yes. I see now why Taylor thought that I must be an addict. This situation is very bad. For me. I mean it is bad for the real me, in that I have been made to feel pity for  _ her _ .”

I have to go in there and hear more about this. “For me? Not you?”

“Yes. No wonder you’re so...unkind. You think of yourself this way.”

I fold my arms. “Explain.”

“The narrative spends almost no time at all on your internality. Yet it is clearly a confessional, a place you went to work things out. I spent five years locked inside my own head, I cannot imagine willingly not being there when I had a page and a pen.”

  
“Go on.”

“And there are places where your pen becomes heavier, dashes holes in the page. Tear marks. What I think is blood at one point.”

“It might be…” I sigh. “How far are you?”

“You’re still in the Bay. There’s a lot of upheaval, a lot. The city has gone from being nearly submerged by some kind of monster to the encroachment of a gang of murderous caricatures.”

I shake my head. “I was...not in a good place.”

“So much so, and so clearly, that you have won me over. What I am going through in this story is nothing compared to the mental state of the person who must have written it.”

I smile wanly, remembering. “Are you quite sure?”

She nods. “I am. I’m sorry for the initial misunderstandings.”

  
That’s better, like, a lot. Wow. “Me too. I’m glad you care, Dinah.”

“I am too, as yet. Although I suspect you will make me regret that.”

Lisa grins. “Smol bringing the  _ heat _ .”

“She’s not wrong. I will. I usually do.”

“She’s gonna cut your eye out, Dinah!” Sophia is rummaging through my liquor cabinet, there’s the clink of bottles and glasses. I suspect I will be far more amenable to her “keikaku” when inebriated, as I am more myse...huh. Okay, brain, delete, thank you. Next.

“What a gift he gie us,” Dinah intones. 

“To see ourselves as others see us. My mother used to read that to me.”

“I know. It was in the dream, when you were Shadow Stalker.”

“Hm. I guess you must have spent time understanding me?”

“It was very confusing and difficult. The perspective switches were quite something. Once I obtained enough control over the lucid...dream, I guess, to narrate, I was able to navigate them more easily. But I spent, again, five years being disoriented. Because of…” She thinks better of something she was about to say. “Things that happened to me.”

I nod. “I’m sorry. I hope I helped?”

She sighs. “I don’t  _ know _ . I want to say yes, but I don’t know.”

“Hebert, what the fuck is this? Evan fucking Williams?” Sophia has two glasses in her hand.

“Couldn’t afford Jameson’s.”

Lisa gasps. “My  _ God _ , she is totally an alcoholic. Sophia, we have got to get her some better taste in whiskey.”

“Wow, Lisa, That’s extremely helpful. Buy the alcoholic better whisky!”

“It’s not like she’s quitting. She can at least drink the good shit, with her friends.”

I blush. “You guys. You fucking guys.” I’m tearing up.


	8. No, You're A Simurgh Plot!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Void Cowboy has the weirdest boner right now.

I sleep that night, Sophia wrapped around me (a lady never tells, dear reader -- the answer is embarrassing either way, and you may assume whichever you find funniest), and it’s...restful. For once. Things are, dare I say it,  _ copacetic _ . If there’s one thing i learned writing Worm, it’s that this is not to last. So it’s fitting that my last waking thoughts that day are of Madison. What’s it like, to find yourself writing someone else’s dream?  _ Shit.  _

_ “I heard they’re expecting someone to make an incursion.” Sophia looks at me, face implacable behind her mask. _

_ “Why would anyone do that?” _

_ “I don’t know. Word has it the Travelers from Brockton Bay came through a rift of some kind, here.” _

_ “Do we have any proof of that, like, for example, a rift?” _

_ Sophia shakes her head. “No, we don’t. But if someone was looking for rifts, or a way home, or anything related to the Travelers’, they might come here first.” _

_ I nod. “Did they say when they expect this?” _

_ “No.” Sophia hefts her crossbow. “Just stay sharp.” _

_ “Got it.” _

_ “Why did you come here, anyway?” She’s stalking ominously across a broken overpass to my left, on Fish Hatchery Road. I swear she can’t...just...walk. She stalks ominously and shadows forebodingly. She doesn’t walk. Walking is for mortals, apparently. So passe.  _

_ “I...you wouldn’t get it.” _

_ “I would. Guilt does things to a person. Things you have to bury, Madison, or Madison will bury you.” _

_ “Good, Let it.” I’m surprised at the harsh anger in my voice.  _

_ “Your funeral.” _

_ “Literally.” I laugh. “Are you always so pretentiously hardass?” _

_ Sophia cocks her head. “Yes.” _

_ Right. Stupid question. Time for a stupider one. “So you felt...guilty, too?” _

_ “I don’t want to talk about it.” _

_ “That’s a yes, then.” _

_ “We shouldn’t have caused a  _ **_trigger event_ ** _. Everything else was fine.” _

_ “Because we got caught?” _

_ She shakes her head. “No. Because you had one, I had one, and -- wait. Hear that?” _

_ It’s a faint barking, and a fainter rustling. As the sounds get closer, it becomes clear that the ruslting is not wind in trees, but hundreds, thousands, maybe even millions of insects. The Undersiders have come to Madison, and they’re looking for something.  _

_ Skitter jumps off the back of an enormous dog, landing in a fighting stance. “Shadow Stalker,” she hisses. “Who’s your little hanger-on?” _

_ I don’t matter to her, even two against one. Her courage would be admirable, if this story wasn’t the only one in which I’m not so...alone. So ignored. Here, I matter. _

_ “I’m Browbeat,” I growl. “Get out of my city.” _

_ She laughs harshly. “This dump? You’re claiming it?” _

_ There’s a fury in my voice, that I’ve practiced, fighting back tears. When my mother hits the sauce after a hard day at the news station. When Emma and Sophia can’t get what they need off  _ **_Taylor_ ** _. When...when the world is mad. Which it almost always is. “Madison is a damned city. But it is  _ **_mine_ ** **. LEAVE!** _ ” _

I wake up, and reach for Sophia in the darkness. “Holy shit. Holy fucking shit.”

“Heebs? What the fuck?”

“Yeah. What the fuck is  _ exactly _ what I would like to know.” I stroke her arm, absently. “So you know how everyone else in our little...thing reports dreams of fictional universes with superheroes in them, from someone else’s point of view?”

Sophia chuckles. “You were in Madison’s.”

I imitate her voice. “‘Madison is a damned city. But it is mine. LEAVE!’ Then I woke up. Like that, like flipping a switch.”

Sophia bursts out laughing. “Holy shit, melodrama for days.”

“Yeah, unlike the eye thing. Not that I’m defending her, but.”

She nods. “Yeah, I guess.”

“You were there.”

“Why? What part of deepest Worm lore am I not tuned into here?”

“That’s the weird thing. Hers is a mere divergence from the baseline plot. Browbeat joins Shadow Stalker, who is of course alive after the...Regent thing, but has been basically Coventried. In the Madison special containment zone.”

“As in WIsconsin?” Sophia’s screwed-up face is so fucking kissable it makes me  _ hate _ myself. But in a good way? Brain, you’re a treasure. Make a note of that one.

“Yeah, Long, long story. Crazy making naked woman from outer space has attacked it, everyone is ruined, it’s walled off, it’s shit duty. So you got it.”

“Christ, Hebert, you are  _ such _ a goddamn nerd.”

I laugh. “Yes. Anyway, Madison.”

“She’s never read the thing?”

“Not a word. Doesn’t even know it exists.”

“This is where I make you think I’m a real deep cover Emma plant, and suggest that you actually, like, talk to her.”

“You know, you’re straight up fucking evil, Soph.”

“I know, ain’t it great?”

  
“You are also actually,unfortunately, right.”

She nods. “I know, ain’t it --”

There is a way for people with our understanding to tell someone to shut up. It involves the lips. It is very warm and soft. She tells me to shut up just as firmly. Twice.

Then we fall asleep again. Dear reader, I haven’t the strength. I begin to see the darkness Lisa was afraid of, in the holes left by the light. And I’m afraid. Mostly of what I’m going to have to put myself through to heal.


	9. Flight of the Dragonfly

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> We raid the Cauldron base with -- no, that's not right. A car on the side of the road. It won't start until the Irregulars get answers. But they're not the ones asking questions right now.

I wake, feeling oddly rested. No one is making breakfast -- at least the smell doesn’t seem to indicate that they are. I say...oddly rested, but the honest truth is that I’m not used to rest.

Or to sharing my bed with...her. This is  _ indeed  _ awkward -- and dear reader please understand, I am not prepared to be honest with you about the specifics of last night. They are as far beyond my ken as they would be yours. 

But that’s the issue. I will not be talking to Madison, yet. I am not prepared to be honest to that degree. Nor, as I round the corner, leaving Sophia’s snoozing form supine on my tattered sheets, am I prepared for...whatever Dinah will require. 

She looks up. “19.1.”

I shake my head. “Sorry, I don’t remember the arc numbers very well. It’s been a long time, and there are lots of them.”

She smiles softly, clearly mellowed. “Two Skitters. A dream. Let me ask you, how long did it take for you to stop...feeling the trauma from your bullies so acutely?”

I look back to the bedroom, a negative pressure respirator closing with a vise grip on my throat and lungs. Sucking sucking sucking dry aaaaaa. “I...don’t....I don’t  _ know _ damn it. She’s in there and we did fine and I  _ don’t know _ .” I sit down and put my head in my hands. 

“I understand. I’m sorry.” Dinah looks at me, and it’s clear. She’s judging me, but compassionately. She’s so strange. Ethereal, yet fierce. I hate her. 

“Me too. I don’t understand, though. Enlighten me.”

“I understand what it is to hurt. To be angry at people who stole your life from you.”

I nod. “One of whom is Sophia.”

“Not her fault. Just is.”

“Yeah.”

She licks her finger to turn a page. “I have been up for a very long time.Your mastery of enthralling  _ story _ is exquisite, whatever flaws the prose might show.”

“Thank you.” I just...I can’t, too much, need a...need breakfast, okay. Need to think straight. Can’t just run to a bottle right now.

“And I do wonder. We know so  _ little _ about Lisa’s trigger event, do you think that’s a constant?”

“She acted like she’d read it, when we first met.”

“A ploy, no doubt. Isn’t that just like her?”

“Do I capture how much we love how much we hate loving her?”

She giggles. “You do. It’s picture perfect.”

I smile. “Good.”

Lisa comes out of the bathroom and mugs for the cameras that surely follow her everywhere, in her mind. “Heard you was talkin’ shit.”

Today ends in Y. I therefore must start it by lashing out. Testing a theory, just like she did!

“Reggie.” I glare at her.

She _doesn’t even flinch the bitch reacts less than Kayden did how can she be so_ ** _infuriating_** \-- “Yeah, no. We ain’t doing that today.”

“Doing what?” I smirk.

“My fucking backstory, Taylor. We are not.”

“Why not?”

“Because  _ fuck you _ , that’s why.”

“We seem to have touched a nerve.”

“Oh, was this your plan too?”

Dinah shrugs. “I can’t speak to that.”

Sophia has woken up. “Guys, I heard fighting, why was I not invited?”

I grin. “We made  _ Tattletale _ mad.”

Sophia yawns. “Damn. That’s new.”

Lisa shrugs. “I suppose I overreacted, but listen. Do none of you have things you simply don’t want to talk about yet?”

We all look at each other, eyes going around the room like cards in a game. “I’m guessing a lot,” volunteers Sophia.

“Yeah no shit.” Lisa sighs. 

“I get that. I’m sorry.”

“Oh, and Taylor?” I look up, eyes meeting hers. “You wrote a book. It’s full of coincidences. There are reasons for that that I’m trying to help you with. But it’s only a key to one person’s secret pain. Your own.”

I nod. “I under--”

“I am not finished. In the book, what is Sophia’s trigger event?”

I start to answer, but she’s pressing on.

“And what about Dinah’s?”

I try to squeeze a word in edgewise as everyone gawks, and am again thwarted. “I rest my  _ fucking _ case. There’s nothing  _ relevant _ in the damn thing except where it concerns you directly.”

“And you know this how?”

She leers savagely. “My power.”

“Guys, guys, real quick, tangent here --” Sophia is theatrically waving her hands to get our attention -- “who do you think would do better in a straight up fight with me? Dinah or Taylor?”

Lisa grins. “Oh, that’s easy.”

Dinah raises an eyebrow. “It is, really?”

“Mhm.” Lisa nods. “Dinah. She hits like a tank no matter what she’s doing.”

“Hmmm.” Sophia is thinking about this, and I’m just...did I just see...did Sophia break up a fight? Oh, right. By starting a conversation about another fight. Of course she fucking did.

“Have we ever seen Dinah give less than a hundred and ten percent,” I find myself asking.

“No we have not.” Lisa nods once, as if to close the argument.

“Or back down against a stronger opponent?” I ask, eyes meeting Dinah’s and smiling. 

“No, we have not.” Sophia smiles at me and it feels...don’t know. I don’t make a habit of valuing Hess’s approval so I can’t tell you how it feels.

“Demonslayer Dinah.” I grin. 

“Is reading, you animals. Please? Just a bit more?”

Lisa sighs theatrically. “Jesus Dinah. Maybe some breakfast?”

“Nope! Worms on the brain, worms for breakfast, worms for dinner, worms on the brain. Mhm.” She nods once, mimicking Lisa, then loses herself in the book.

“Fine.  _ Be twelve _ .” Lisa laughs. 

I’m singing, taken away for a second by the surreal  _ funness _ of all this. “Nobody loves me, everybody hates me,” 

Then it’s a duet, Sophia doing descant, as I sing the usual refrain. “No we fucking don’t…”

“Guess I’ll go eat -- wait, what?”

“I think you’ll find I’m full of surprises.” She smirks. And I’m reminded of flute notes unbent, unbowed, unsung -- broken. And…

I don’t care right now. It’s okay, or as okay as it can be. “My mom would have loved to play for you if you could have sung like  _ that _ .”

She shrugs. “Caged birds sing different.”

“Voluntarily.”

“I deserved to be with you. I had to find out the hard way. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.”

I’m about to melt from all this fucking  _ nonsense _ my Sophia related life has become -- it’s too cute, it feels too real, it makes me want to barf, I love it so much -- 

But Dinah has other plans.

“READING! GET. A. ROOM!”

Lisa whistles, producing a key fob from her pocket and clicking it. Downstairs, two blasts from a car horn. “Hear that? That’s Rocinante saying ‘Adventure time!’ Although the old girl needs some oats first.”

“You named your fucking car.” Sophia gawks at the affected strangeness of someone whose entire personality seems to be such.

“After Don Quixote’s horse. Of course she fucking did, Sophia, don’t question it. Saves time.”

Sophia nods. “Right about that. As usual, Hebert.”

We head downstairs, and it’s only after we reach the street below that I realize -- I’m leading. 

Lisa takes a second to grind the gears before remembering she’s driving a manual, and we’re off. Gathering speed, as if she’s preparing to go on the highway. “Where we headed, skipper?” I’m fidgeting with my hands, idly. I control nothing. I’m sober today. I need  _ many _ coins for this. Gold, if it can be arranged.

“That depends. Thought we’d go meet your dad, where’s he working these days?”

I cough. I pause. I cannot have heard that right. I stutter. “U-uh, h-h...Chicago. Hundreds of miles away. Not today, please?”

She laughs. “Don’t worry, Weaver dear. We’re not making you go there. Why aren’t you closer to him?”

“I like it here.”

“Don’t you  _ ever _ lie to me again.” Lisa pulls the car over, hazards and emergency brake on in the blink of an eye. “ _ Ever _ . Your life depends on it.”

I roll my eyes. “Why does my life depend on it, you manipulative jerk?”

“Because I said it does. Maybe I can write too.” She scribbles in the air idly, not even forming letters. “Let’s see. When suddenly, Coil’s goons appeared out of nowhere to kidnap one of the only reality warpers in existence...hm, nope. It’s your lucky day. I have ny guesses about why.”

“About why you can’t manipulate reality? Can I, even? I thought it was just coincidence.”

“All I know, T-Heebs, is that the  _ world _ would be a lot righter if everyone here knew the answers to these questions.”

“But you don’t.” Sophia arrives. I’ve noticed she only speaks when she has something interesting to say. I do not understand her. Even a little. 

“Did I say that?”

“All I know is this is Save The Last Dance and you’re the teacher, and I’m getting mighty sick of it, Miss Becky.” 

“I bet you are. Sure it’s not Riding In Cars With Taylors?”

“We watched these movies in the group home, what the fuck is going on.”

“You also watched The One. Step the fuck up, all of you. Quickly, please.”

“The fuck?”

“Things are getting metaphysical, Sophia, because  _ I need to get a plot going here, quickly _ . There is a significant risk of the reader losing interest.”

“...what. I might walk home?”

“No you don’t, Taylor. We are going to stay. Right here. Until. I find out why. You don’t. TALK. TO.  _ YOUR. DAD.” _ I shit you not, Thunder booms. 

“What would I say?” Rain droplets fall onto the windshield, with increasing speed. I find myself idly wondering which one will make it back to the oil rig before the Siberian does...Flashdance, or Skitter. “Hi, I’m a world record shattering twenty-four hours and counting sober, because my fairy godmother has clawed her way out of hell and brought a crazy elder goddess and, oh, by the way, Sophia from high school with her to fuck my life up worse than even I could and call it fixed?”

Lisa scoffs. “I’m honestly torn between ‘yes, you should say that, because saying anything is better than nothing at all’, or ‘it has to be the truth or it won’t be worth it’.”

I nod. “Fair. Dad, I’m an alcoholic, and while I’m not sorry I dropped out of college, boy do I have a story for you?”

Lisa shakes her head. “I looked at your phone. You don’t have a contact for him. No Dad, no Danny, no nothing. Are Kurt and Lacey even in there anymore?”

I’m cut in a place I don’t remember having skin. “Not since...about 2015.”

“Right. Everyone, slowly, in trickles. First them, then daddy dearest...maybe me, if this gets too harsh? Maybe Sophia?”

Sophia’s nostrils flare as she yells, almost in desperation. “All right, you, this is really fucking unnecessary.”

“Is it, Taylor? Is it really?”

I shake my head. Sophia reaches for my hand as the tears form. Outside, the rain slows. “No, no it’s not. I don’t talk to my dad because I’m afraid I’ll push him away again.”

Sophia looks at me, voice soft but intense. “I’m proof that doesn’t work like you think it does.”

“I don’t  _ know _ that.”

“You can’t know anything. You can choose to be open or to die of thirst, Taylor. I don’t care which, but do it quickly, because I have places to go and people to see.”

“I’m trying…”

“Prove it,” Lisa barks, looking at me over the seat with the  _ meanest _ look in her eyes. Scared, too, although I don’t know why.

“All right.” I grin, sitting up and squaring my shoulders. “You’re afraid I’ll reject you. I’m all that’s keeping you from realizing your ego is meaningless without me.”

Lisa sighs and looks away. “Fine. I’m not the King in Yellow, I’m not the Fourteenth Doctor. I’m not an angel from Biblical lore. Although you should be afraid, very afraid. I’m just a bum, like you, a worthless rotten nobody, who was somebody, until someone else died. His name was Reggie, he was my brother, and I...I didn’t see the signs. And so that you know all of what I just said is true, that’s my canon trigger event.”

“Canon, now.” Sophia whistles.

“That’s what the kids are calling it.” Lisa signs, deflating visibly. “The signs, of course, that he was on the edge. That his being yearned to...end his story. One day I came into the bedroom and I found him in the closet, hang--” she sobs.

“And you thought...you thought I was...Lisa, how dare you?”

She’s crying now. “What the  _ fuck _ else am I supposed to do? Just one, just one, that’s all I have to save, and then I can…”

Sophia grabs her arm, leaning over the seats. “Don’t you dare finish that sentence. Make it two. Maybe even three.”

Lisa looks at her, smiling. “I could kiss you, Sophia Hess.”

“I’ll just bet.” Sophia sits back and folds her arms, mock stern. I can’t  _ not _ laugh.

“All right, I was.” I feel the tension leave my body. “If I couldn’t get anything interesting going by my birthday this year, I was gonna maybe give it some real serious thought.”

“Well now you have some  _ real _ interesting shit going, Hebert. Don’t puss out on me,  _ ever _ . That’s an order.”   
  


I salute. “Yes ma’am.”

The car starts. “Well, I bet you real money Dinah’s just about done. We can head home and get her  _ scathing _ review of this thing you hate so much, and then I think it’s time for something neat I’ve been wanting to show you guys.” Lisa backs us onto the busy road, then  _ omigod _ rockets into a U-turn  _ holy fuck _ and speeds down the road, thankfully the right way, at about twenty over  _ holy shit _

“Live a little, that’s what I always say,” she says, adjusting her rear view mirrors with one hand and turning on the radio with the other. 


	10. Drink The Kool-aid/Blood of Eden

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lXgkuM2NhYI

We’re pulling up to the apartment again. Sophia has been just  _ jamming out _ to Lisa’s reckless driving playlist, which is, honestly, full of bangers. The whole experience has made me wonder if they’ll let me drink and drive, but...I doubt it. These are responsible troublemakers. Which is why I want to ask, anyway. To see the looks on their faces. 

“So this stuff you wanted to show us.” I have to shout to be heard over the music. 

“Nope,” Lisa vulpines. “We gotta make sure Dinah’s in, too. One hundred percent. When you’re all ready to drink the kool-aid, then you shall  _ drink the kool-aid _ .”

“I see. Well, listen, I gotta be a stickler. You know mom studied cults, religion, the arts, poliitcs, mass movements, all these things, right?”

Lisa nods. “Sure.”

“So, the expression comes from Jim Jones and his People’s Temple, right?”

Lisa nods. “I get it, yeah.”

“They used Flavor-Aid. The generic brand.”

She laughs. “All right then. Taylor can drink Kool-Aid brand Kool-Aid, Sticklerberry Pedant Blast, and the rest of us will drink Flavor-Aid as Jim Jones and Eidolon intended.”

“Rude. Wait, Eidolon?”

Sophia’s got her face doing that  _ I swear to god I’m following along _ thing, and I wanna mack on her like a truck, so bad. “Eidolon?”

“Oh. He’s a guy, from the thing.”

“Yeah, and how much of ‘the thing’ have you read?”

“Absolutely none! I just know how to reference it at the worst possible time in the best possible way to give you the most  _ awesome _ fright.”

“How meta of you.”

“Quite.” Lisa is so  _ slappably _ smug, aaaaaaaa.

A horrible thought has finally clicked. “Kool-aid, drink, Eidolon.”

Lisa smirks. “You’ll never know and I’ll never tell.”

Sophia boggles. “Explain. I am a novice, o master.”

“The Cauldron vials didn’t come up  _ once _ when we were snogging our way to blowing up LA?”

She thinks for a moment and then -- “oh, fuck. Lisa, is that what you’re gonna give us?”

“Okay, Sophia, from the top. You’ll never know, first of all.” Lisa counts these off on her fingers solemnly. “And I’ll never tell. But...no. Now you might be asking, does no actually mean yes? And the answer is no. Or perhaps yes. Wait, fuck, I’ve flummoxed myself.”

Sophia doubles over laughing. “You’re insane.”

“And you’re nuts.”

“ _ I’m _ starving,” I say, starting up the stairs. “Let’s go find Dinah.”

So we do. She stands up, and flies across the room, and gives me a hug. A bear trap hell of a hug, I didn’t see this coming at all. 

“We’re all so very small,” she whispers. 

“In the end, yes, I know. You finished it.”

She pulls back and nods. “I’m so sorry.”

  
“For what?”

“That you were so very small, and so very alone, in the end, when you finished the book.”

I smile sadly. “Aw, it’s nothing. I...held on. With one arm and less of a brain. And…”

She nods. “Now we’re all working together.”

Sophia regards us skeptically. “I am getting real sick of all this hugging it out. Can’t we just go for drinks and get into a fight instead of talking about our stupid fucking feelings?”

Lisa grins. “I thought you’d  _ never _ ask.” She produces four cups from my cupboard, fills them with water, and produces four drink packets, the little powder things. 

Dinah observes. “Curious. Are these the --”

“Yes, and no, but well yes, but actually no,” I say.

“She’ll never ask, and we’ll never tell, or some stupid bullshit like all that,” Sophia jibes.

“Oh. I see.” 

Lisa nods. I did not think it was possible to translate “nodnod” into human body language, but here it is in front of me. Really neat stuff. “Now. All I will tell you is that this was given to me by God himself before I left his throne, to come to you all. It was obtained at great personal cost. It is the bones of story, the marrow of crisis. Ink, if you will. Perhaps it is a Cauldron vial, made by grinding up God’s wife. Perhaps it is a magick potion from a fairy tale. Perhaps it is flavored sugar water. And I bet at least one of you dorks wishes it was actually laced with cyanide. I’d normally say, well, tough luck, we aren’t entertaining your stupid death wish today,  _ taylor _ , but -- everything is on the table today.”

She opens the packets and pours them out, into the glasses of water. The liquid settles perfectly, with no need to stir. I don’t remember describing Cauldron vials this way? Maybe I got them wrong. “Especially,” Lisa vulpines mystically, “the one possibility that none of you truly wish to face. That the power was inside you all along, that it was the friends you made along the way, and that both of those things can be true because you are yourself’s first and best friend.”

“Gag me with a spoon,” says Sophia. “Just get the cringe over with and kill us already.”

“So mote it be,” Lisa replies cheerfully. 

“So these will actually give us powers,” says Dinah analytically. 

“Now where did you hear me say that?”

“Got me there.”

“Lisa if I turn into a Case 53, so help me God --” this is too crazy, might as well go all in.

“ _ Aaaaannnddd  _ Taylor is being a grump for no good reason, everyone  _ drink _ !” Lisa slams hers back like she’s an expert shot taker, and everyone else follows. Even, not all that reluctantly, yours truly.

“I don’t feel any fucking different,” Sophia says. “Lame as shit.”

DInah shakes her head. “Neither do I. And that is definitely tropical punch. It’s also Flavor-Aid.”

I nod. “That it is. Cyanide kicking in soon, everyone. It’s been a pleasure.”

Lisa grins. “I don’t  _ feel _ any different either. But I’ve felt great all day. Why don’t we go and see what happens?”

“See what happens?” Sophia should have known better than to ask this, as I can already predict the response she’s about to get.

“Well, Sophia, did you say you wanted to, and I think I’m quoting here, go for drinks and get into a fight, didn’t you?”

“But that’s…”

“Crazy talk, illegal, and the coolest damn thing Lisa has suggested all week. Don’t be a  _ fink _ , Hess.”

Dinah grins. “Hell yeah.”

We pile into the car, Blitzkrieg Bop seguing into Dragula into Big Iron creeping up my spine and thrilling me with  _ anger _ , finally something is going to get done, finally asses are about to be kicked, finally the world is setting itself right, finally --

Whu?! 

Who’s making all this stuff up? Where’s it coming from?

“Lisa, there’s no one out there. We didn’t  _ trigger _ , you know what that’s like, this is nonsense, what the fuck are we doing?”

Lisa smirks, putting the car into a gear I can simply describe only as  _ moar _ . Hitting the gas. It speeds up, Du Hast turning to Down With the Sickness -- 

Sixty. Seventy. Residential, use caution. Eighty. School zone.  _ Ninety _ . 

“Lisa, this is insane. What are you doing?”

She  _ gleams _ at me in the rear view mirror,  _ vulpine _ and  _ savage _ and  _ cathartic _ and free. “Escalating.”

I am not sure who is the Lord of the Flies anymore. I have a sudden  _ flinch _ away from the idea of “Piggy’s head” -- split open, dialysis, untruth, pestilence,  _ elpis _ , last prayer to  _ Beelzebub _ whispered, and --

The semi truck is  _ lateral _ and  _ pure _ and I am  _ angry _ and  _ outraged _ that Lisa could have led us this far and my hand reaches for  _ Athena  _ black and severe and just and I am merely  _ Orion  _ and I cry  _ havoc _ and she lets slip --

And suddenly it isn’t, the semi truck is  _ copacetic _ and  _ free _ and  _ calm _ and  _ neutral velocity _ and I see the broken arm of  _ Artemis _ sticking through the wind...not the window, the  _ fucking doorframe _ , and she sits up and flexes and it’s  _ not _ broken  _ no it is oh god _ I almost retch it’s exactly like Aegis we’ve died and god help us gone to Worm, gone to Worm for our sins and 

She flexes, Artemis flexes, Dinah flexes the door clean fucking off. And with a flick of the wrist it bounces off the windshield of the semi and I’ve never, ever seen such  _ resilience,  _ such  _ strength _ , such  _ purity  _ \-- and she unbuckles her seatbelt and  _ dinah is a brute and smol is very very angry has to be a brute 8 at least god help anyone who gets in her way  _ and she’s picking Lisa out of the driver’s seat, who by the way is grinning like a madwoman radiating heartfelt “I told you so, ha, see, I knew it, everything according to  **計画** , co-pa-cetic baby” and I’m just, first of all, how dare you, we could have (never) been killed and I’m  _ pushing _ her full of  _ anger _ and  _ outrage _ and  _ hurt _ and  _ frustration _ and  _ glee _ and  _ why not have the  _ **_k i t c h e n s i n k_ ** you smug foxy  _ bitch _ and 

_ Telltale _ is upside down like a sack of fucking potatoes with the most bewildered dog that got the bumper expression and I’m cackling and 

_ Athena _ claps her stable, balanced, soft hands and 

“Well, I sure fucking should have seen that coming,” LIsa says, rubbing her head. 

“Which part?” Dinah has her hands on her hips, outraged and cute as a hellish button.

“I mean, I saw most of it. The semi, the cluster trigger as desired, the...words, the pen, the paper, the ink, but...getting slung full of all kindsa emotional shit by  _ Taylor _ (you belovedly offensive goofus you!) and dumped unceremoniously on my ass by Dinah, oh, man!”

Lisa laughs and laughs. “Are you there, God? I did it! Do I get to stay now?”

“Lisa you’re high, let me fix that.”

Sophia steps forward, shaking her head. “No, me. This is my thing.” She rubs Lisa’s forehead. “Shush, now. It’s okay.”

“Whoooaaaaaaa….” Lisa flops. 

I look at Sophia Hess, impressed but actually insulted, like, “how the  _ fuck _ are you the nice one? the ...stabilizing thing?”

Sophia grins. “I’m not. I’m ink. Circulatory. You saw me stop the semi, right?” The driver is on his cell phone, by the way. I figure we don’t have long. 

“Yeah? Isn’t that kind of...nice?”

“Taylor. Did you sleep through physics cla...oh, right, we distracted you, fuck, I’m so sorry, damn...listen, I  _ transfer _ . Energy. Any amount any kind anywhere.”

Dinah’s eyes bug out. “Oh my fucking god.”

“You said it, sister.” Sophia goes in for the high five and Dinah...blows her hand off with impossible speed and force and she just holds it up, wiggles her fingers, and says, “Too slow. Nah, just kidding.  _ Fuck _ that feels good. Like my hand just ran a mile.”

I...consider the implications both as a combat power and as...not, and I must say I am deeply impressed. “So wait, my power is fuckin’ bug control tier bogus, again, isn’t it? Gawd  _ damn _ it…”

Lisa sees my poor disappointed face and pats me on the arm. “Nah. You’re the Pen. You tell us what we need to feel in each scene. Goofus, like I said. Gallant, using his power as designed.”

I flex this concept, mentally, finding it  _ satisfactory _ and honestly really fucking  _ cool _ and she says

“What’s my motivation?”

And before I realize it I’ve levied the Canary’s curse like “You can go  _ fuck _ yourself” and she’s like

“Oh, man, that was  _ awesome! _ You should have seen the look on your face, it was like, welp, I’m Paige McAbee, and haha oh man it didn’t work, wow, lucky you, Taylor you Goofus.” She’s  _ wheezing _ . 

“Lisa what the crap.”

“No, like, I can’t take myself seriously, give me a couple seconds...okay, self-concept un-bothered.  _ That _ is what that did. Do that to me more often, wow, I felt normal.”

“Do I...do I have to watch my mouth now?”

“No, Orion, you don’t. Be interesting. Be powerful, be free. Fuck ‘em, that’s why. That’s your motivation.”

I’m grinning madly at Sophia. “Damn right it is.” And pan to Dinah all “Maybe?” and she’s very cross like

“No.”

Aw. Well, anyway, moving on. I look back at Lisa. “Wait, wait up a second. Your power.”

“Plot. McGuffin. I am whatever the plot requires, I also dispense it.”

“I thought I was the author.”

“Sure. You tell the story, I just...show you what’s there to tell.”

“So if you die we’re fucked?”

“Chekhov’s spoilers. Be careful, please.” And I nod. 

Sophia is just  _ boggling _ as is so common and she says “Hebert, help, I slept through English class.”

Dinah grins just the most evil grin I’ve ever seen. “Spoilers. Not allowed.”

Sirens are coming, and I have to remind myself they’re not actually the PRT. Brockton Bay has  _ heroes _ again and I...we...we’re the first, the only...what did we do?

Dinah’s bounding across the way, grabbing the poor truck driver who called this thing in in a fireman’s carry, says “we’re superheroes, sir, I need to save you, for the cameras”, and I’m just doubling over laughing as the black and whites roll up

_ Hands in the air _

_ You’re under arrest _

_ Eat your school don’t do vegetables stay in drugs kids _

News flash bulbs going off as we’re cuffed and hustled into back seats that have never had less power over us than they do in this moment. This, this is what it’s like. The razor’s edge of being  _ willing _ and being  _ unappreciated _ when no one else  _ will _ and it tastes like  _ hero _ and

So help me god if my mother is down at the station wearing a stupid hat I will  _ angst  _ and  _ longing  _ and  _ faith _ and  _ hope _ and  _ love _ and  _ righteous anger _ and the greatest of these is oh jesus you don’t really want the answer to  _ that _ one and -- dear reader, I am mastering myself, it is so awesome, I just noticed --

And she won’t be. But I am a hero, now, for once, after  _ wishing _ on blood and tear stained notebooks for years. I am also under arrest, which has to be like what, the tenth time coming up one of these weeks, such a waste,  _ except that it no longer is _

And I hope that she will be. And I follow the path for it now has an end. Victory. Which has never, ever been in sight for me before.

Dear reader, did I say I was scared  _ last _ time shit went down?


	11. Sovereign Citizen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I've sat on this and the successive two chapters since writing them in one manic night, in a warming shelter, in Astoria, Oregon. I wasn't sure about the direction they took the story. But sometimes enjoying getting lost is what helps us find ourselves again. 
> 
> Buckle up, and be sure to drink your flavor-aid.

"Hebert, Detective Wallis. Not Herbert. There's a Taylor Herbert in your system, he's male. Sex offender, CSP minor, no prior other than that. That's clearly not me." The laugh is bitter, as usual. Nothing has changed. We're villains, damn it. After everything I tried. 

I bet LA is nice this time of year. 

His mechanical keyboard taps in a staccato aryhthm. I wonder if his thoughts sound like that. I know mine do. I wonder why. 

Colin Wallis has a story. How much of it is the one I wrote? Is any tragedy he's had to face my responsibility? In Worm I talked as if heroes were escapism at their best and corruption at their worst. I wonder if Legend is a regular Don Quixote here too. I wonder if Arthur and their child are safe. I wonder what I have done. I wonder if I have ever been the hero. If perhaps I just wanted to let myself think I wasn't the villain. 

_ Even Scion wasn't this powerful.  _

I try something.  **Taylor found herself surprised as Colin turned to her and said, "there's been a mistake. You're free to go."**

He turns to me and nods. "You've done this a lot."

I didn't think that would work. "I've often found that people get a laugh out of me knowing this guy has only the one conviction."

He's dead serious. Literally actual Colin Wallis. I can't even. "It's an extremely serious conviction. Unlike your many different ones in the last five years."

I sigh as silently as I can manage. "That's the joke, Detective. Never mind."

His lips flatten and he looks away for a moment. When he looks back, he says "I don't plan on it."

Wow. Flanderized much? I just can't.

There's a long pause. He starts to speak several times before he finally gets going. "You have powers. All of you."

I decide to play dumb. "We do?" 

"I know you probably think your experience with the car crash was a manic episode or delusion. My understanding from the file here is that you're prone to those."

"Mhm," I say sweetly. 

"But it isn't. We don't really understand what you do, or if you do anything at all. But witnesses at the scene observed one of your friends appearing to block immense impact force with mere touches of her hand, possibly somehow changing your mental state in an instant with her hand as well."

I remember her hand on my forehead, as if checking for a fever. How safe and stable it felt. How much I — 

"Is Sophia all right?" 

"She's in custody. Mostly psychiatric observation. She's not physically injured. She should be."

I nod. "I see, that makes sense. She has no priors, give her psychiatric observation. I do, treat the bipolar alcoholic like a criminal."

Colin sighs. "Miss Hebert, I would prefer that you not prejudge my intentions with this conversation until it has concluded. Is that possible at all?"

I think for a moment. "Honestly, I'm not sure. I'll have to get back to you on that. Let's see how it goes though, l can try." 

He stares at me, dumbfounded. "Your jokes are not actually jokes. I don't know if you're aware."

I laugh ruefully. "That wasn't a joke, Detective Wallis. I can't prove that I was fully aware of my own mental state during the crash, I can't prove that my memories are accurate. I don't know what your intentions are, because I don't know if I can trust my own perceptions, and so I can't understand why you're not contradicting them."

He considers this. "All right, that's actually very fair. You can't be sure that my characterization of events is true, because what I am describing seems impossible according to the consensus understanding of reality. Is that correct?" 

"Yes. I don't know if I have a power or not, but if there are people with powers and I have one, it's indistinguishable from a mental illness to me." 

He nods. "Your companions seemed to convey general agreement with that although they think your power is quite real. We're on the phone with some people I never thought the BBPD would ever be on the phone with, and they think perhaps if you have...a power…it's a kind of emotional projection that also affects you, that you couldn't control."

"It's bipolar disorder, except it's delusions of grandeur, because my friends and the police detective who arrested us during a manic episode that caused a car crash that should have killed someone are all feeding my perceptions, which can't possibly be reliable."

Colin actually smiles, the absolute bastard. "I do understand the problem." He slides a photo across the table to me. "Dinah Alcott."

...wow. Artemis — this is not the frail girl with distant eyes and physical tics and a stutter and clear difficulty thinking, this is a monster out of myth, this is exactly Aegis but a photograph that makes me sick to look at — should not be alive. She's mangled. Broken. She looks like she got hit by a truck. She's  _ grinning _ and giving a peace sign to the camera, but one finger is regenerating from the first knuckle up, and the other is bent at a ninety degree angle. There is a dent in her head and 

"Stan Winston."

Armsmaster smiles defiantly. "The practical effects expert?"

"That sure isn't CGI."

He sighs. "It's a photograph. No one has ever seen anything like this before. It is very real. You are a matter of national interest and security, as such your presence here and that accident are entirely classified." 

Oh  _ Christ _ . "You want me to join the Wards." 

"The what now?" 

I wave a hand. "Never mind." 

"If it's some kind of literary reference —"  _ you really have no idea  _ "— then basically, yes, we are going to allow you to lead and form a superhero team, or whatever this is. Dinah used that word and the press members on the scene of the accident are being paid handsomely to forget the video of her carrying the driver and saying that word."

That's not how that works. We went joyriding and we would have killed someone and — 

"Lisa." 

"Excuse me?" 

"Where the fuck is Lisa. She was driving. Is she okay?" 

Colin looks confused. "You were driving. There were three people in the car. We couldn't find any trace of a fourth, although your friends have testified to Lisa being the driver as well."

_ The tale is in the telling.  _

"I see. Listen, I don't mean to sound ungrateful, but why can't I just be delusional?"

He laughs again. Maybe he's not, like, just Armsmaster. Maybe he's not my fault. "I think I can see why that would be appealing. Trust me, if we find any evidence of Lisa anywhere, anything at all, any hints, we'll be as interested as you are."

No, not like that, jerk! "Good or bad interested?" 

"Say that her power is to simply cause all evidence of her existence to disappear. Make people think she existed, but be unable to prove it."

I nod. It's not…not plausible, if this isn't a weird dream as I bleed out in the car. "Backwards Imp."

"Hm?" 

"Literary reference. You wouldn't…I can't…"

"I own every issue of The Invisibles. Mint. In bags. In addition to the original trade paperback. I've been in several heated and passionate debates about the Doom Patrol. Personally I think the television adaptation gets closest to the soul of the material. I GM an online game of Mutants and Masterminds. The longest running PC in this is my ell dee arr,"  _ omigod he said the letters out loud just like that he's so fucking cute he's gonna say Dr—  _ "who plays a character named Dragon."

Jesus fucking God and the holy prepuce. This can't be real. He's so unlike the real thing and yet he is undeniably the real thing. Which I know makes no sense, but. "Dragon, the character, not your online girlfriend, is an artificial intelligence. The other player characters, and perhaps the other players even, do not know this."

His eyes widen in shock. "You're the first person ever to not make the joke. I had to stop saying she's from Canada, even if she is. But yes. Narwhal, another PC, suspects it but the others don't." 

"Narwhal is real, seriously?"

"She's a player character. I'm sorry, I wasn't clear. Her player is a guy, named Robert, from Oregon. He's a bit of a sex pest, so she's…"

"Naked, basically. I know."

He's gobsmacked. " _ How? _ " 

"I think this is a negotiation, not an interrogation, and while I enjoy the fun diversion into hobbies, I think I need to keep that card face down for now."

"You don't have any skills in network penetration or the like, as far as we're aware. As long as you didn't obtain that information by committing any crimes, I can live with that." 

I nod. "I don't…think I did?" 

He chuckles. "Good enough. Anyway, yes, this is absolutely a negotiation. I want you to be superheroes. A lot of people who are very powerful want that too. Most of Brockton Bay law enforcement and city government doesn't know, they might want it too if they did."

"We...weren't. Heroic. No matter what she said. Whoever was driving the car was trying to commit suicide, clearly. They obviously failed, based on what we know. When the absolute last most likely thing to happen happened to them, they or Dinah or someone else decided that they were clearly superheroes despite having just committed reckless driving, criminal endangerment, and so on."

He smiles. "This sort of crash is a common suicide method, yes. I can't speak to how you came to that conclusion but we have people you can talk to if you need that."

"I don't think I was driving. Would you find it strange if I said I think Lisa wanted to end her story, that she succeeded, that she's with us in spirit?" 

"Yes, but not unusually so compared to…" he taps the manila folder our files are in. 

"Right. I just don't know that it's relevant."

_ Now you're catching on, kiddo. _

"What is relevant?" 

"If indeed we set out to be heroes, and I don't trust my recollection that we did, we did it in the most backward and counterproductive possible way."

"They were in the wrong place at the wrong time. Naturally they became heroes. Princess Leia, Journal of the Whills. As quoted from that venerable ancient text in the 1976 novelization of the original Star Wars by Alan Dean Foster." 

"Will you be mad if I say that you are such a fucking nerd?" 

"Dragon's player says that too." He grins, truly at ease now. 

"I bet she also says it's kind of cute but only under duress." 

He roars with real laughter. Emotion. Armsmaster. Wild. "She does at that. You agree?" 

"Yes." I smile softly. "I'm sorry I didn't trust you, Colin. I don't trust myself. You have to understand, somehow." 

"I've never been there but yes. I do. This hasn't made your difficulties go away. It's made them worse, harder to contextualize. Hasn't it?" 

A silent nod. 

"So what do you want?" 

"Well. We could leave here at any time. We're superpowered human beings, you're not." 

He eyes me for a bit. "This is true." 

"So I want to state that my kind should, I think, be called parahumans. First off. It's not as if anyone has any better ideas, right?" 

"True enough. I suppose your branding is important. I like it, actually. Alongside humans, with humans. 'Para' implies collaboration, or a hope of it, in ways that 'meta' and 'super' do not." 

"I'm not cut out for the Magneto life." I chuckle. Skitter surely was. 

"Thank  _ fuck _ ." He smirks at me. 

"So I want to know. Am I free to go? Am I being detained?" 

He pulls out a stopwatch and presses a button. "Thirty five minutes of pleasant conversation. An absolute record both in length and demeanor. The boys owe me...many drinks." 

I roll my eyes, although I'm not sure if it's at myself or at him. "You did  _ not  _ just time me. Everyone should say that."

He smiles. "All in good fun, for once. Your demeanor helps with that far more than the fact that your presence here is…classified."

"So I'm not being detained? I'm free to go?" 

He sighs, leaning forward, drumming his fingers on the table. He reminds me of my dad when he got frustrated with me, last time we spoke. Back in Chicago. Disappointed in me. "Your presence here is classified. You've been charged with no crimes, as those require a legal record to be created and entered publicly. This would defeat the purpose of classifying your presence in a police precinct station for reasons of national security. Since you are classified you are not here. Since you are not here you are not being detained. Since you are not being detained, under normal circumstances, you would be free to go. But the concept of going requires a place to go from, as well as a place to go to. You are not here. You were never here. Thus, logically and conceptually speaking, you cannot be free to go. From here. However as you said you and your companions objectively possess the power to leave at any time. Have I made things any clearer?"

"Jesus, Colin, those sure were some words. Some of them. In an order of some kind or other." 

He smirks. "I thought as much. What else do you want?" 

"I want to see my friends. Is Dinah  _ okay _ ? She was leaving in an ambulance, I think."

"Sophia asked the same question. She has been with Dinah in the hospital since she decided to wait for you to want to meet with them." 

I sigh. "That figures." 

"Oh. I didn't answer your question. Dinah is ambulatory. She looks much better. She was never really not ambulatory and alert, which had several doctors very worried before they received a lavish early retirement." 

"How much do I owe you right now, Colin? Damn." 

"If you're a hero, we the people owe  _ you _ . Heroes give all they owe. It's in their nature. A villain would not have asked that question. A villain would have said that paying people exorbitant sums to conceal your existence shows weakness of some kind on our part."

"It does, but that's not important to me."

He smiles. It's genuine. "Now you're catching on."

"So let's go meet my friends."

Colin stands up. As he holds the door for me I realize he never told me his first name and never asked how I know it. That's unusual, and I can't figure out why it bothers me.


	12. The Lisa You Need Right Now

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things are as they seem. Unfortunately getting what you always wanted sucks. A lot.

"Everyone feels like they're crazy. Including me." Sophia is unusually serene. Most people are not as calm as she is right now, as focused. Sophia is not most people. 

"What do you mean?" I smile, embracing her. 

"I mean, like…listen, Hebert, this is not how things usually go. People don't...have the abilities we have. People who find themselves confronted by superfreaks don't usually act this chill. They go for the torches and pitchforks."

I pull back to look her in the eye. "You think they should shove you in a locker and yet you're kind of ashamed they don't have the power to do that to you."

She lets loose a low whistle. "Jesus fuck, Hebert. Why you gotta do me like that? No, never mind. Stupid question. But yeah, honestly, I expect that kinda stuff. That's why I did it for so long."

I'm glowing. She's trying so hard. Harder than me. "You're getting better now. You're a hero."

Dinah is pacing up and down the room I won't describe as a cell. Its glass sliding doors are airtight, it seems built to contain things. Hopefully only disease and the risk of it. I know it can't hope to contain her. 

Neither can we. I think that's good? 

She speaks. Many of her teeth seem to be missing. Her throat is still deformed. The dent is shallower. "I don't feel safe. It's all in my head, understand me? I know that. But I don't feel I don't feel I don't feel —" 

Sophia kisses Dinah right on the dent, holding her and shushing her like a child. "It's okay. You're okay. We're okay. We're going to stay okay, okay?" 

"Okay." But Dinah has pulled away and she's folded her arms. She's not making eye contact with any of us. I worry. 

"Dinah." My voice is harsher than I meant it to be. 

She looks at me. Then looks away. She's scared of me, maybe? Wow. "Sorry. Sorry. Sorry."

"Dinah, you're traumatized, hon. You're in shock. We're here for you."

"They gave me a lot of meds. Different kinds. Nothing helps." 

I nod, listening. 

"Do you know why?" 

I shake my head. Sophia stares, an intent, alert gleam that the people observing us through the cameras they doubtless have in here must think is dangerous and wild. They don't know her like I do…do they? 

"I don't have a body any more. This is what Sophia and you felt in my dream. When I was busy and had gone away."

"We had each other's bodies, I thought." I'm trying to understand her, trying to follow. I'm not sure she's going to a place I can follow her. 

"No. You have each other's bodies now, and I don't. Have. A body? Sorry. Didn't mean to confuse or offend you."

"Dinah. Baby. Your body is fucking superhuman." Sophia reaches out to touch her arm, but Dinah brushes the offer away. 

"Parahuman." It's a poorly advised interjection but I want to help. The concept is good. Colin made me see it differently. I just wanted my story to…be my story. 

"What we mean is, your body is still your body. It isn't broken. It just looks that way."

"NO!" Dinah tears herself away from us, physically. She'd climb the wall if she could, I think. I wonder if she can. 

"Dinah." I realize I just barked at her like I was bringing a dog to heel. Fuck. Shit. No, Taylor, bad Taylor. Rolled up newspaper! 

"No. No stop no fuck you no."

I reach out, letting soothing pulses I'm calling sea foam green like they're a Crayola color flow over her. She senses this, her body reacts like I've dumped scalding water on it, and she's across the room to do God knows what to me but Sophia stops her. "Relative motion. It keeps the peace in a pinch."

"You could have just stopped her movement?" My feet are stuck. I can feel them moving but they are not actually doing that. It's very surreal. 

Sophia scoffs. "Jesus Hebert. Physics. Basic physics. I love you but were you homeschooled or something?" 

Right. One of Newton's laws. "I mean, locker thing?" Wait, I can feel my feet moving. If they're not moving through space but they are moving, the movement isn't being canceled, it's being transferred. Which is what she does, I guess. But where to? 

"If you gave up on your education at thirteen that is not my problem, babe." I'm still kind of focused on trying to wiggle my fingers, figure out where they're moving at…wait, that doesn't make any sense. 

"Maybe brain fog then, or booze withdrawals, or, FUCK! FUCK!" My feet and fingers finally come unstuck and I do that old banana animation you used to see on forums all over the room. 

Dinah is slamming her dented pretty little head into the glass doors, leaving…marks. Wet ones. "Talking." Wham. "About." Wham. "Me." Wham. "Like" wham "I'm" wham "not even here" wham! 

"Shit. Dinah. I'm sorry." Sophia just looks at her, that cold stare that I hope is compassionate again. 

"I mean, it's fine. I don't even have a body. I'm not here."

I suddenly have a hunch. "Did Colin tell you that?" 

"Who is Colin, Taylor you fucking Muppet?" 

"Sorry. Detective Wallis, Dinah."

"He said something like that. I know he didn't mean it. But I haven't been here since the crash and I'm not sure I ever was. Not after I met you first, that is. Maybe before. That long ago it doesn't matter. All I am is a character for you."

"Dinah, Jesus, I…" I swallow hard. "I don't know what to say."

Her eyes are steel and her upper body is tense, leaning forward. Arms taut. "It doesn't matter."

"No." I feel a sudden impulse, I have to fix this. I've done wrong somehow. Again. "I think it does."

"You wrote a version of me that doesn't...isn't real. It's not me anymore than it is a character in a book, but it really is me. I've been that scared little girl. And I think that you feel like you can just control us. I think you're powerless without us."

I swallow. "Go on. Like you're still in a book I'm writing?" 

"Partly." She takes deep breaths, she's shaking. She could kill me if she wanted. "You can make me feel calm if you need to badly enough."

Oh God. "You could listen to me when I was unkind to you, hear what I was trying to say. Better now. You know people, know their emotions. And this power, it magnified that. And you don't want to." 

"It's a lot of responsibility." I have given this almost no thought before. I feel so stupid. 

"Yeah. Hero. Maybe the hero needs a villain."

"I don't want a villain."

Sophia interjects gently. "She said you need one."

"No." I shake my head. "Go on. This connects to the body thing."

Dinah opens her hand, palm up, fingers splayed. "Watch carefully please."

"Okay." 

She breaks off one finger with incredible force, lightly flicking her wrist as you would a butterfly knife. Another, she sticks in her mouth. "Jesus Dinah, you've made your point."

She shakes her head, grinning ferally, and bites down. The finger comes free, gushing blood. I notice that the other one is already regenerating. 

"This body has no withness. Understand? My capacity for self regard has never been good. This will destroy me. You needed this to happen. For your redemption story. And so I only feel like a character in your stupid book."

I suck in a breath. "And the worms ate into her brain…"

Sophia shakes her head. "We won't let that happen to you. Dinah, you are unnecessarily cruel. You hurt yourself, you accuse Taylor, you will die if you don't bring your anger at…something under control."

I scoff. "Look who's talking."

"I can teach her." 

Dinah nods. "I'm sorry. This is just very bad and I have to help everyone and I'm sorry, I am. Very much so." 

"It's okay. You have a body, though. This thing you've got is absolutely made of meat. It fits the definition. Will that work for now?" 

"I'll try. But. There's one more thing." Her voice is very small and sounds like it's coming from very far away. "I don't remember Lisa driving. That was you." 

Sophia shakes her head. "I don't know what to say about that. I have similar memories now. I'm not sure what actually happened."

Dinah's eyes go wide. "Remind me what her voice sounded like?" 

I pause. "She was condescending and a little bitter. She knew it all, or so she felt. She wanted us to be happy. Her voice sounded like that."

"That's you. You don't remember her because she wasn't REAL." Dinah is gasping between ragged sobs. "I'm sorry, I don't want to disappoint everyone. She was you. She wasn't real. You are very very real and I am very very scared. Of you."

Sophia shrugs. "I got nothing."

Dinah flings herself at me, and I flinch away from her. She's surprisingly gentle, and I realize she's kissing me, and her lips taste of cordite from the airbag and blood from…us, probably.

I have a sudden instinct to kiss back but I can't trust my power isn't behind any of this nonsense. "Dinah, calm down. I know you need comfort but I need to ask a question."

She sulks. "I'm not good enough." 

Oh golly fucking gee. "Dinah, you're good enough for us. Just not like…" I'm at a loss. 

"Taylor and I can talk about it. Maybe that would be bad for you, to change your relationship with us like this so suddenly, though?" I look at Sophia, hoping my face reflects my shock and sense of betrayal. She can't just do that to us! Not like this! But the kiss felt good, and she's fierce, and she's kind, and those are what Sophia and I see in each other, and…

Power? Don't care. React as if it's real. It might be. If it's not it won't make it worse. 

"Yeah. What she said." 

Dinah sits down and folds her arms. "Fine. I'm going away now. Trying to find you two when I was safe around you."

Wow. I have absolutely no idea what's going on. How to help. If I can help. "Dinah, hey." There's no response. Her eyes are like black glass.

"Dinah. Are you there?" I know I'm only asking this because I know she's not. 

"Dinah. Say something. For Taylor. She does love you. In her way." 

Sophia looks at me and shakes her head. I shake mine in response. Dinah has fully dissociated again. This is truly bad. I wish I had any language at all beyond bad, good, wow, wild, don't know what to do or say. I don't even understand my own demons. The idea that hers are so much worse scares me and comforts me in equal measure. It could be worse for me, because it is so much worse for her. I may be blessed by that now but who knows in the future if my mind will be as reliable as today? 

"Were you fucking serious just now."

Sophia bites her lip. "I don't know. I really just don't know. She's got her body dysphoria, which I think she's had for a long time, turned up to twelve or thirteen right now, because her body isn't normal anymore. Even for her. For humans. Hell, you don't expect superstrength and invulnerability to look so small. And to feel so big. If I had that kind of power to puff up my physical presence with nothing more than posture and eyes, god damn, Hebert."

I remember stony, burning compassion, just like I see now, pushing me into blood and mucus, some of which is mine. "Yeah. Thing is. You kinda do."

"Shit. I'll be damned. I bet it's because I'm kinda fucked up." 

I shake my head at the absurdity of my love for this person. "Yes."

"Anyway she's got her body confused with…ours. And she needs physical comfort on some level she's confused about. Maybe she could learn the difference for herself?" 

"You're not suggesting this. This is insane." 

"I don't know. I don't feel that way about her. I just don't know what works anymore and why it works."

I shake my head. "I get that."

Detective Wallis opens the door and two medics roll a stretcher in. They lift Dinah onto it. "She's real light," one says. "Scale says what it says," replies the other. Then she's borne away, light as a feather, stiff as a board, to I don't know where. 

Colin shrugs apologetically. "I'm sorry. We didn't know her mental health was…"

I nod. "It's okay. Never meet your heroes, Colin." 

He cocks his head. "You know, we get along so well I didn't realize I never told you my first name. How do you know?" 

"Same way I know about Dragon. All I can say." 

He nods. "I understand." 

Sophia steps toward us. "Should I ask?" 

"Long story," Colin says. "Let me show you to your quarters?" 

"Sure. We're together?" 

He nods. "Of course. Now the idea you two were discussing is none of my business. Obviously. But if you need us to move you all into a larger room it can be arranged, at some point." 

I roll my eyes. "At some point. This isn't really a hospital, is it?" The drive over did take an hour or more…

"The US Army's Edgewood Chemical Biological Center could be said to have hospital facilities. The primary purpose is research into —"

I cut him off, angrier than I should be. "Biological weapons. Are you FUCKING with me right now Colin."

He raises his hands, like I just attacked him. "I'm a police detective. My understanding is it's not like that. Not exactly. There is…some interest, yes. But this facility had the tools to quickly understand Dinah's physiology and make sure she was healthy. Once I get you to your rooms I need to go back to work. I'm sorry. I'll be in touch."

Sophia spits on the linoleum floor. "We're not here either, are we." 

"And the time to go rogue would have been when you weren't at the station. I did what I could to convey that, I'm sorry." Colin opens a door and I can see a carpet, a couch, some lamps…is that a fireplace? 

"Jesus Colin. I get it but holy shit."

He turns on his heel and walks away. 

Sophia wraps me in a hug and kisses me. "All we have is each other," she says. "I'm proud of you. I'm on your team and I'm not leaving you." 

I don't deserve her. My God, what even is my life. I return the kiss, and I feel...safe. Admitting. 

"There was never any Lisa, was there?" 

Sophia smiles sadly. "I don't know. I think Lisa wrote Copacetic, and posted it online. I think Lisa had read Worm somehow. I think Lisa was driving the car and wanted, as you said, her story to end. I am very glad it didn't."

"Who the fuck made the Kool-aid then?" 

"Flavor-Aid," she corrects gently. "Someone who was comfortable with dying, who knew she didn't want to die, who knew what I know."

"What's that?"

Sophia grins the goofiest grin I've ever seen. "The real Lisa was inside us the whole time."

I roll my eyes. "Jesus, Sophia, you're a sap sometimes."

She grins. "You love it."

"No. I hate it. It's so bad." My smile tells a different tale.


	13. Out of the Box

Intrepid and studious readers will remember Dinah's game of mental chess with Abaddon and what it cost her, in the latest issue of You Are Shadow Stalker. This is what happened next, in one world. — Ed

AT LONG LAST, YOU RETURN.

"I'm not entirely certain you're real. That's the only reason." I shake my head, tears running down my face. The glands still work, their product pink with earned despair. I do not regenerate. I merely die slowly. Reader, it has been so long since we last spoke. We are all stories, we are all struggles. Mine nears an end. 

Resilience is not worth the price. I am Shadow Stalker as well, now, and I begin to see why Taylor feels the way…that she does. 

Why has she not been resilient? She has been. Of course. So have I, in my own way. 

NOTHING IS. NOT EVEN YOU. 

"I knew you'd say that. It's comfortable to see you again, at least."

[SMUG SMILE]

I stand, pacing. Testing the limits of my box. It appears that I am on a bus. There is no driver, no passengers. Outside the window the world is empty, a great windswept American plain, a death. A devil. Dust in the wind. 

I smile thinly, remembering how much I've missed this. "The car is on fire and there's no one at the wheel, right? Is this your game?" 

THERE IS PROBABLY HOPE. OF SOME KIND. THE NORMALS FEAR YOU. 

"That's never actually been less interesting to me. For such a scary demon you're not very smart. I fear me. This is not new."

IT'S A THOUGHT, IS ALL. I ADVISE, I CANNOT DICTATE. 

"You would be a lawyer."

[GRIN] 

The reading lamp in the next seat turns on, unbidden. "Why is a story?" 

I gape. I stare. I smile. "Lisa?" 

She nods, returning my smile. "The self same. Y'see, I've been trying to figure it out myself."

There's a brief series of rhythmic taps, a feedback whine. A hollow voice whispers breathily over the PA system. "We are now approaching your final stop, in Brockton Bay, New Hampshire. This line ends, there. It does not continue. Get your stuff off the bus or it will end up in a junkyard, thank you for riding with Charon Transit."

Lisa looks at me. "Yeah. That's why. He's been doing that since I got on. First in the original, then in yours, then in that stupid Vindex thing, then on the way to you guys, now he's like this. Why is a story?" 

"Am I dead?" 

"A story that wants to end is not the same as a person that wants to be dead. That's all I figured out so far."

I make a small hmph sound, feeling the weight of my own derealization. It usually feels like freedom. "Is that why I'm here?" 

Lisa folds one leg over the other and looks across the aisle at me. "I assume so. I don't know. Why is a story?" 

THIS IS POINTLESS. THERE IS NOTHING HERE. 

I guffaw, laughing out loud for the first time since I was a little girl. "You don't believe that. You'd unmake yourself." 

THE OTHER MERELY WANDERS, BITTER WITH GRIEF. BEFORE THAT, THE TWO ENJOYED SHIFTLESS PROCREATION. WHY HAVE A PURPOSE WHEN YOU CAN BE DEVOTED MERELY TO…ENDINGS? 

"Christ, he's actually a teenage nihilist. This guy was in 'canon', too." Lisa chuckles mirthlessly. 

"That is a purpose, you fucking dillweed." Oh. I'm angry now. That's been missing. 

ANGER SOLVES NOTHING. 

"But like shiftless fucking," Lisa says…

"It passes the time while we endure." She reaches out to fist bump me across the aisle and I reciprocate. "She's smart. You're done now, big guy."

YOU GAVE UP. 

"Yeah." I nod, sighing as my voice catches. "For years. My parents gave up on me and I guessed maybe they had a point. I knew Taylor wasted her life, but…it feels like wasting my life even worse to have been so…gone. I wasn't even mentally present."

Lisa squeezes my hand. "You didn't have many better options. Didn't have sufficient strength to resist. You told yourself a story to pass the time."

"Resist not evil," I muse softly. "Maybe that's the trick." 

"What should we do instead? If there's not a good story to be had in a cunning child killing the devil, what stories are there?" 

I think for a moment, considering this. "I killed the devil and I took…a break. Many things happened after we left Albuquerque, some of which I can't very well get into in detail here. You wouldn't believe me if I told you."

Lisa smirks. "Try me." 

I AM NOT DEAD. I ETERNAL LIE. 

"I tell better lies." I'm glowing with hope now. "Where I come from they call them stories. There was one story where you were dead. This is the one where you don't matter."

DINAH IN NAME ONLY IS TO TRANSCEND ABBADON IN TRUTH? 

"You said it yourself. Truth isn't really your thing. You're just as much a story as everyone else, but you're a critic. You don't even read books."

THERE IS NOTHING OF YOU IN THIS WORK, THE GIRL SAID. THERE IS NOTHING OF YOUR TRUE PAIN. 

"I see now that that was not true."

"Everyone's a critic. Taylor has told her story and begun another one," Lisa interjects. "I help people do that. Now I'm helping Dinah."

I close my eyes and breathe in deep. "There were once two sisters," I say, "who lived at the bottom of a well and dined on nothing but treacle."

"Not sisters. That's someone else's bag. Two girls." 

I catch what she's getting at. "I like that. Two girls. And anyway one day they'd had enough of wells, they'd had enough of treacle." 

"One had convinced herself that stories existed to save people. She fancied herself an author."

"The other had convinced herself that stories aided resilience. Gave humans something to cling to in dark times as well as something to guide them in better ones. She fancied herself a narrator."

"They were both wrong."

My eyes meet Lisa's. There's lightning crackling around us. A glow, like lamplight, is at the front of the bus. 

NIHILISM CANNOT BE COUNTERED BY PROFUNDITY AND BEAUTY FOR THEIR OWN SAKE 

"They were wrong because they believed stories existed to counter something." For the first time, I'm able to completely ignore this asshole. This hateful empty voice. I now recognize it as mine. It's very small and very scared, I think. I feel for her but I can't let her trick me. 

what else can they do? 

Lisa folds her hands in front of her. The lightning changes from blue to purple, arcing between us. "I thought it was how my story was ending, when I realized. Tales exist for one reason and one only. To be told. If someone listens, that's fine."

"Maybe they never will. Maybe they never care. Maybe no one comes. But you have to find your voice."

but I did that 

"No you didn't, Dinah. I'm sorry. You didn't. I love you and I wish I could help but I am Dinah now. We're not doing that anymore," I say. 

"And there was this fear, on my part, that no one would listen. That no one would love me back. That no one would extend that care and that effort. The same way that I feared I hadn't done for Reggie." Lisa chokes up. Her voice cracks. "I did what I could. I told the story of someone who cared about Rex deeply. I wanted his fate to become mine."

"And I wanted your fate to become mine, small one. I wanted to end. Stories hurt to tell. That's why you quit."

"The important thing is that you have someone to tell." 

"And we do." I look at Lisa and grin. "Now. I didn't see it before."

but what if it doesn't matter in the end? 

"The hard truth, other Dinah, is that we're leaving Hope in the box for a bit. We're leaving devils killed and victories won. We're going out of the box, alone, and we're just going to see what happens. If I find a way to come get you out I promise you I will."

"Now we have an unscheduled stop. If you'll excuse us I need to finish this cool, like, incantation thing we were doing."

"Yes." Our shining eyes find each other in the dark. 

The earth begins to shake under the bus. It veers off course, swaying with manic abandon. 

please don't leave me 

"I'm not. Anyway, Lisa, I said, kiss me, you're beautiful, these are truly the last days."

She does. "You grabbed my hand, and we fell into it, like a daydream or a fever." 

The shaking stops. I'm in my body. I'm breathing. I hurt. All over. Like, a lot. Sophia is looking down at me with radiant concern. Taylor is looking at something else, in shock. "We woke up one morning and fell a little further down. For sure it's the valley of death."

Lisa fishes something out of her pocket, meeting Taylor's gaze with an impish grin. She shakes it out. It's wet and leathery. "I open up my wallet and it's full of blood. Seriously, Dinah, what the fuck. Is this yours?!" 

"Probably. I could sleep for a week."

"Let's," Lisa says, laying down on the carpeted floor and folding her arms under her head. "Night guys. I can explain everything. Later."

"Yes." I grin. Taylor's...Taylor can't be crying. Her mythic hardass power level surpasses even Sophia's. "We will explain...later."

"They're quoting obscure Doctor Who at us." Taylor folds her arms and pouts. 

"I'm not even sure I want to know. I hate you guys and I'm so glad you're back." Sophia smiles. 

"Believe me, us too." I yawn. 

*****

Madison held the phone close to her ear. Usually she was a chatty sort, speaker and loud talking and all that. Today, it simply wasn't an option. Too much to discuss. "Greg. Are you serious."

"Yeah!" The voice had lost none of its excitement and boyish awkwardness since high school. It had deepened and become more calm, measured. Now there was almost a movie trailer tone to it. 

"Taylor."

"And two others. I have a reliable source."

Sure you do. But we love you anyway. "Who?" 

"A girl I met online. From Canada." He sounded so serious, she had to laugh. 

"No." 

"Well, you know I have to protect my sources."

Madison nodded seriously. "I'll bet. And so they got powers, they were removed, and your source saw Detective Wallis?" 

"Yes."

"Saw. She's from Canada, Greg. Something doesn't add up."

"She sent me an encrypted file. Didn't give me a key. I'm trying to brute force it. But it's 256SHA, that's not happening."

"I wonder if it's possible to find the key."

"Why, though? Why do you care?" 

"About superheroes? You've read my draft, Greg."

He makes a strained sort of face-palming noise. "Oooo, yeah. You feel guilty."

"No."

"Jealous." 

"No." 

"Well I do."

She leaves the ambiguity as it lays. "I just care, Gregory. Period."

"You've changed."

She shakes her head. "Everyone does."

"She doesn't, from what I heard. She's just as fucked up as you…" He's merciful, for once. He doesn't say "left her".

"You didn't do anything at all one way or another though."

He makes a glum grunt of acceptance. "Point."

"And anyway she's dating Sophia now."

Greg squawks. "What the fuck actual?" 

"I know right? People date weird people after they finish being stupid kids. People they'd never expect being happy with."

"Another point. You're showing me up today, baby girl."

She smirks. "I'm in the grocery store, Greg. Don't get into that until I'm home."

"Bet on it." 

She groans and disconnects the call. On a sudden and inexplicable whim, she tosses a twelve pack of Flavor-Aid into the cart. She's ready to head home. She has writing to do. 

"Defiant One One Actual. Authorize. Over."

"I can't just go into Madison and dig your people out of there."

"You have to."

"That isn't our agreement. You aren't allowed to…"

"Defiant One One Actual."

"My name is Teresa Richter. I'm a person. Your name is Colin Wallis. You're a person. Let's be fucking people. D11A refused at this time."

He has to begrudgingly accept her point. But there's a reason he's tried to force her to do this one thing. Tried to chain her again. 

Overhead, the Simurgh is singing. A wall of fire is screaming down State Street. Bagel places and delis and record shops and bookstores are burning. With them the Wards. Save one, who rides away on the back of a giant dog. 

Browbeat is a prisoner of the Undersiders. And Shadow Stalker is in pursuit. No longer a Ward. This is where the story takes a turn. This is where the river card decides. This is where he needs an ace in the hole. 

"A robot shall not through inaction…" he grits his teeth. 

"Thank you for appealing to my principles, Colin. We will discuss this later." 

He nods. "Copy. Defiant actual, see you back at the ranch."

Dragon swoops down in the Hydra suit. Browbeat is conscious of the song's lowering to a murmur. "I'm here," she says. "We're going to get you all back."

Missiles erupt, knocking the dogs hither and thither. A tractor beam sucks them inside. 

A mask comes off. Sophia looks at her. "I'm sorry."

Browbeat uses the blink controls to make the voice changer even deeper. She hears a confident and powerful voice reply to Shadow Stalker's accusation. "Not enough."

Madison barges into the living room, where Greg is frantically messing with his stupid Kali virtual machine. 

"I have an idea."

He looks up. "Go on." 

"Defiant One One Actual."

He types on his mechanical keyboard, a stupid expensive piece of equipment he brags about on reddit. He's such a nerd and she loves him so much. He smacks the enter key and the computer makes a fart noise. 

"Seriously? Why is there a trollface on my screen?" 

"Hm." Madison pretends to think. She's been right so far. "I'm sorry."

"I'm sorry." 

"I'm sorry?" 

"I'm sorry, Greg. Quickly." She truly is. 

He types and hits enter. "You should have said you were trying something. What is this, your draft is a key somehow?" 

She nods. "Kinda. Are we in?" 

He grins. "Oh mama. We're in." 

"What's the package?" 

He turns the screen around and she looks at it. The words "allow a human to come to harm", and three red dots on a map. A set of coordinates. "Grab one of your stupid go bags and get to the car. It's time to void cowboy up."

He pumps a fist. "Hell yes."


End file.
